Mercy
by Laryna6
Summary: DSOverclocked AU. Love doesn't necessarily redeem, but at least the angel Remiel is trying to live up to his name of God's Mercy. Relationships come with baggage, like family members and other halves. Gin/Naoya/Aya, Abel/Haru.
1. Chapter 1

_I have no excuse for this fic, especially since I haven't picked the 'Tell me about Aya' option on one of Gin's e-mails since I'm a perfectionist and want to keep a recent-as-possible pre-choice save file with all routes open (although I'll need to make another one so it'll contain that I beat Lucifer) & I'm just basing this on the rest of the stuff Gin and Haru say. _

_Liberties taken with the order of events on the first day. Some liberty with Haru's character taken because under these circumstances she wouldn't blame herself for the demon outbreak and wouldn't be suicidal._

_And, of course, worldbuilding used to justify putting two characters who never interact during the game in a relationship solely because the author thought it would be hot. Smoking hot, as Shoji would say. Well, the pairing is crack. The worldbuilding is… also crack, but crack I've actually thought about._

_Normally I play through having Abel be genre savvy/aware of his past as Abel, but for this fic I decided to go with the whole thing in Amane's Eighth about how no one else remembers what Naoya does, no one understands what he's experienced, and how lonely it makes him to be fighting a war on behalf of people who compared to him are children a fraction of his age: he's not a demon, an angel or a god, just a human, but unless we do a Highlander crossover there aren't any other humans who he can really deal with as equals (unless Kazuya becomes the King of Bel again and regains the memories in Babel). _

_Because of that, I had to create a character for Kazuya, and a lot of it came out of what Atsuro keeps saying when people (especially Kaido) meet Naoya or point out that what he's done is incredible – that it actually is immediately obvious that Naoya is not normal, and even Atsuro, who is a genius and used to him, still can't get him. So here's Kazuya, and his parents just took in someone who is older than he is but still an orphan (which is not a good thing to be in Japan: often their relatives won't contact them ever, forget taking them in), and Kazuya would have wanted to draw him into the circle the way he does a lot of characters in the game: Kazuya is pretty clearly someone who looks after people. But he can't understand Naoya, although he tries, because he's a little kid and he's dealing with someone who, if you go with Judeo-Christian mythology's most commonly known creation myth (there are actually two in Genesis), only about, oh, five years younger than the universe? Kazuya's entire life experience at this point was likely less than the time Naoya _hasn't _experienced. _

_This chapter starts out in media res, really, and then it'll catch up to and finish game events. This was going to be a oneshot, but I realized that this gave me an opportunity to show some stuff about what Naoya and Gin experienced during the Lockdown, even in an AU form, that's kind of hard to do when they were on their own and not really interacting with anyone during those times._

* * *

"We're coming to save you, Haru!" Yuzu called across the demon-filled plaza.

Well, it was nice to have such loyal fans, but, "I'm okay, really," Haru said, hitting a few buttons and then the keys on her synthesizer. As Uzume and Lorelei appeared, she added, "I needed a break from working on that song anyway." She was just seriously, seriously blocked. What was Aya thinking, assigning her something like this? She wasn't good enough yet, and then the power went out.

"Wow, Haru, that was amazing!" Yuzu said once they'd cleared out the demons.

"How'd you summon demons without a comp?" One of the girl's friends said at the same time as her. "A synthesizer?"

"Hey, you're pretty good yourselves," Haru said, almost wanting to pull back her synthesizer. She was definitely getting fanboy vibes from this guy, and she didn't want him to lose control and start grabbing at the synthesizer Aya gave her or something. "Comps, huh? I thought you had to summon demons with song."

"Song?" Atsuro asked her.

"Yeah, the Primal Common Tongue or whatever," Haru said, shrugging.

"They called you the girl who knows the primal common tongue," the third one of their little group said, blue eyes looking at her curiously.

"Yeah. Hey, cute headphones. Guess they must have mistaken me for Aya, though. She's a lot better at it than I am, or she was until she hurt her throat…" Haru paused, red-orange eyes widening. "Wait, Aya!"

"Oh no, what if they've already captured her?" Yuzu realized. D-Va's founder and keyboard player!

"I haven't seen her in a few days… Gin said she and our new electronics guy were going to try to do some recordings, if her throat was up to it." But staying away from Gin's place this long? "Gin's been looking worried, too."

"New electrician?" Atsuro asked.

"Yeah, he did something to Aya's synthesizer so I could just plug it in instead of trying to find those old batteries for it. Lifesaver right now… Damn, the power's off."

"You can borrow our charger," Yuzu offered worriedly.

"Why don't I charge it right now while we talk," the other one offered, after a glance at Atsuro, who looked a little disappointed but didn't ask to take a look at it instead. "I think it should be safe here for awhile: we got rid of all of them."

"Yeah, we'll keep a lookout too," Yuzu agreed, sitting on one of the bleachers by her friend.

"You, what's your name again?" Haru asked, sitting on his other side. "I think it's Kazuya, but I might be getting it mixed up with someone else."

"No, it's Kazuya. Kazuya Minegeshi."

Haru snapped her fingers and pointed them at him. "Kazuya Minegeshi! You must his kid brother, the one with the headphones with better sound quality than our old set of speakers!"

He blinked at her. "Well, yeah, they are pretty good. My parents bought them for Naoya when he moved in with us, because his nickname used to be Nyao-chan. He took them apart and redid everything but the casing and gave them to me before he left. But you know Naoya?"

Haru nodded. "Yeah, he's our new electrician."

"Wow, seriously!" Yuzu exclaimed.

"Wow, you're lucky." Atsuro's eyes sparkled. Haru's band must be really good, if _Naoya_ liked them.

Haru chuckled. "I think it's the Yas. People whose names end in –ya are good luck for me," she said, smiling at Kazuya.

Yuzu looked for a second that she might have gotten territorial, but eee, Haru! If Haru wanted to be near Kazuya, that meant Yuzu could hang out with them both! At the same time! Eee! Kazuya was the _best! _

"Wait," Haru realized. "He moved in with you? But he's got a matching name and everything. What happened, divorce or something?"

"No, he's my cousin. His parents died when I was little."

Haru winced in sympathy. "I could have sworn you were his kid brother. He talks about you like you are."

"Oooh, did he talk about me?" Atsuro asked. "Naoya's my teacher."

"Well, he did keep saying, 'my student could do a better job than this,'" but Haru thought he'd just meant that their old equipment had just sucked that badly. Atsuro still looked like someone who had just gotten Aya's autograph.

"Do you know where he is?" Kazuya asked. "We're looking for him."

"Maybe at Gin's bar?" Haru thought, pushing a stray bit of hair back behind her ear. "He's been pulling a lot of all-nighters there, because he had some big programming job to finish and he wanted to get our stuff done before the next concert. Gin's been letting him crash at the apartment upstairs because Aya's not there right now." So Naoya wasn't likely to walk in on anything the way Haru had by accident that time. And that other time. And… "Now that I think about it, it is kind of weird that he's been coming back at night and Aya hasn't been…" Oh god, what if she was in the hospital! Gin had looked a little worried lately, but not 'the woman who is not my wife only because she doesn't believe in that sort of thing has been kidnapped by demons!' worried, because if that happened Gin would be out there kicking ass. There was a reason he didn't need a bouncer. More annoyed he was having to wait and not wanting to worry Haru.

"Big programming job?" Kazuya asked, glancing at the others.

"Yeah, for the Shomonkai."

"So the Shomonkai are the third party the program was meant for!" Atsuro realized. "And he must have installed it into your synthesizer along with a wireless card!"

"What? No. Aya taught me to summon demons. She doesn't even need a synthesizer." Haru did, but that was because she was just Aya's student, main vocalist or not.

"So that's what the comps are copying?" Atsuro wondered. "If you're right, Abel, and demons are summoned by rituals…"

"Wait, Abel? I thought your name was Kazuya."

"Oh, that's my nickname," he said, shrugging. "You can use it if you want." If she didn't find it annoying to pronounce.

"And hers is Yoohoo," Atsuro said, pointing at Yuzu with a big grin on his face.

"Knock it off, Otakuro! It's Yuzu, Yu-zu! Don't try to trick Haru into using that stupid nickname!"

"Hey, what's wrong with being an otaku!" Atsuro demanded. "You're a Haru otaku! Harutaku!" He paused, grinning again.

"Oh no, don't even think about it!"

Abel and Haru somehow ended up looking at each other and sharing a grin. "Some friends you got here," she told him, amused.

"Yeah," he agreed. They were great. "I thought I saw Gin down by Shomonkai headquarters earlier."

"Yeah, let's check that out," Haru said, standing up as he handed her the synthesizer.

"Oh, wait!" Atsuro realized. "You can't see the death clock, can you?"

"Her number's the same as ours," Abel told him. "So we might be in the same danger anyway. I think it's better if we stick together."

"Yeah, we can't let anything happen to Haru… Wait, does this mean she's going to be coming with us?" Fighting demons with them? _Singing _in order to fight demons! Yuzu's eyes widened.

Suddenly, fighting demons became unimportant next to _private concerts from Haru_.

Oh. My. God.

"Death clock?" Haru asked. After getting an explanation from Abel and Atsuro, she said, "Well, I can't let you guys get killed, that's no way to repay the best tech guy we've ever had. I can't believe I was able to get sound like that out of a measly battery-powered amp earlier."

* * *

"Hey, Gin!" Yuzu called.

"Oh hey guys… Haru…" Gin looked away, at the Shomonkai building, obviously evasively. "I've, uh, got to go."

"After him!" Abel cried as Gin disappeared into an alley. They ran after him, only to run into more demons.

"We lost him." Yuzu scowled at herself.

"This is just like what happened with Naoya earlier," Atsuro said. "We went after him, then we ran into demons and he got away."

"I wonder if it's really a coincidence." Abel looked skeptically at one of the exits from the lot they were in. "Naoya e-mailed us just after that, and the waira showed up… I know I saw him when our comps summoned the first demons, too."

"You mean he told those demons to attack us?" Yuzu was outraged.

"Yeah. To slow us down, and to make sure we knew how to fight. He's up to _something_, so he can't babysit us all the time."

"If he's so worried about us, then why did he drag us into this anyway!" This time, Yuzu's demand for an answer was more annoyed and less outraged, the kind of familiar annoyance that came with telling Atsuro to stop calling her Yoohoo, dammit.

"And what's going on with those two?" Haru asked, hands on her hips. "If they're not telling me something about Aya…"

"Should we stake out the bar?" Atsuro wondered. "He's got to come back sometime, right? And maybe Naoya left some clues there."

"There's his apartment, too, if we can get past the police tape," Abel realized.

"Mind if we head to the bar first?" Haru asked.

"Sure, Haru!"

"Harutaku…" Atsuro muttered to Abel behind Yuzu's back.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

* * *

Haru had a key to the bar and the apartment above the bar, just like Abel had a key to Naoya's apartment. "Yeah, he's been staying here, alright," Abel knew, looking at the shoes in the entrance. "Those are his spare geta." He made Haru think of a hunter spotting a sign of his prey. She kind of liked that hint that there was more to him than there seemed, that he was dangerous in the same way Gin was. Really nice guys, both of them, but not people you'd want to mess with.

"Are those Aya's?" Yuzu asked, staring at three pairs of high heels. How could she walk in those?

"Yeah. I've always been kind of nervous about telling her to break a leg." When Haru's teacher wore shoes like _that_, it seemed like Haru should be careful what she wished for, because it was bound to happen one of these days.

"That's new," Haru knew as soon as they were inside.

"Yeah, that's got to be Naoya's rig," Atsuro agreed, sitting down in the chair. "Oh, damn, there's no power!"

"Gin's got a generator," Haru told him. "He said he just got it last week. He brought it down last night and hooked up to the fridge so everything didn't go bad." Wait.

"Last week," Abel said, clearly thinking the same thing she was. "And as soon as the blackout started?"

"Come on, let's go get it."

"Wait, Atsuro!" Yuzu said, grabbing his arm. "You saw how they were _not _handing out food." Tossing crates in, like they were animals in a cage. "We can't let all of Gin's stuff spoil!"

"Don't worry, Yuzu, taking it away for just a bit will be fine. If I can't do it in fifteen minutes, we'll move it down again and try again in a couple hours," Atsuro said.

"Are you sure that will work?" Yuzu asked Abel.

"Hey, who's the technical genius here, me or him?"

After Atsuro was settled with the generator, Abel told Yuzu that she could keep an eye on him while he and Haru looked for more clues. Yuzu agreed reluctantly: she didn't like the idea of just poking around in someone else's house, but Haru was allowed here and Abel knew what to look for, so if it was just the two of them that was better than bringing more people.

"This is a pretty big place, for Tokyo," Haru told him.

"Yeah, I've seen Naoya's apartment." And Abel knew what kind of fees Naoya charged, so the only reason he didn't have more space was probably because he didn't need any more. Naoya wasn't exactly Spartan, but he'd never really been one for having a lot of things. Well, that and Naoya liked the neighborhood, the trees. "How old is Gin?"

"Twenty-five," Haru said proudly. "And he already owns his own bar." Wasn't that awesome? "He and Aya have been together for a long time: D-Va isn't a house band, and they invite other people to give shows, but we've been moving up in the world fast." It still wasn't much compared to Harusawa's rich ex-family, but they'd earned it themselves.

"Naoya's twenty-four, and he's been working as a freelance programmer since he was younger than I am: he turns down contracts from all sorts of big corporations." Abel smiled as though this was a joke just between them. "Since we're talking about our families." Bragging, but they really were just that great, huh?

Haru held up her hands. "Oh, hey, Aya's just my teacher."

"And Naoya's just my cousin." Her point? "They're family to you, aren't they?"

"Well… I guess…" Haru was blushing a little, shyly, because she really wished they were her family but she hadn't quite dared to think of them that way. "It would be really cool if they were my parents," she said as she opened the door to the bedroom. Even though they weren't that much older than her.

The futon hadn't been put away and the sheets were messy, but that was perfectly normal. Getting the futon out took valuable time that could have been spent having sex, according to Aya, who had laughed at Haru's discomfort and given her a hug. Aya liked to easy it was to tease Haru. At least they'd changed the sheets after having sex when Haru had stayed here, before they could afford to pay her enough for her to have a place of her very own, that she'd earned herself.

The room smelled of Gin, his masculine scent and cologne, but instead of Aya's wildflower scent there was something else, something that smelled like cedar and sandalwood, that made the fledgling songwriter in her think of petrified wood: ancient, hard, cold, frozen in time but still with the color to it of living trees, proof that it had been alive and might be again.

While Haru thought of that, looked around to see not an area given over to Naoya's things but classic, elegant combs and clothing mixed in with Gin's and Aya's own things, a dressing gown tossed into the laundry heap with Gin's boxers, Abel knelt and picked something up off the pillows at the head of the bed.

"What's up?" Haru asked when she realized that he'd frozen.

He stood up slowly, then held that hand out to her, thumb and forefinger still pressing against each other to confine a longish silver hair and a shorter black one. He looked honestly shocked.

That was when it clicked for Haru, and she grabbed his hand to make sure she was seeing this right. Gin's hair and Naoya's hair on the same pillow. The room smelled of sex, of Gin and this guy's brother. It didn't smell of Aya. She hadn't been here in more than a week.

Haru didn't think, "Oh my god, my dad is cheating on my mom! With another man!" For one thing, her father _had _cheated on her mother. Often. With women, as far as Haru knew. Her mother had cheated on him, too. She didn't think, "Gin is cheating on Aya!" either, because that just wasn't going to happen. For one thing, Gin wasn't an idiot: it wouldn't be so obvious that he was having sex in a pad any of the band members could just let themselves into even with Aya gone if she had a problem with it.

Even though Haru was certain she was the only band member in town: Aya had booked the others to some class that wanted an instrumental rock background for improv song practice over in Kyoto.

This wasn't the first time they'd had a threesome, either. Haru had been very jealous of them for awhile until Gin and Aya sat her down and said that not only was she underage, she was Aya's precious student: none of them were going to replace her but the two of them weren't going to sleep with her, since that would hurt her independence. Not that Haru had cared about that at the time.

The shock was because Naoya had pretty obviously _moved in_. Not in the temporary crash sense, or they would have given him a place for his stuff. Like this, it would be practically impossible to find everything in order to pack up and move back to his place anytime soon.

That implied something more permanent than a one night stand, or when a friend was in town for the annual music festival. This was an actual addition to the, the family and they'd kept a secret from her.

Abel looked equally alarmed and disturbed when she looked up at him.

Haru tried to make a joke about it. "So, uh, I guess were in-laws now?" Her smile was still strained. But Abel better not be thinking that this was Gin's fault or something.

"Why'd he have to pick now to develop a sex drive?" Abel asked her, not quite plaintively but with a, 'why does my brother have to keep doing this to me?' air of familiar, frustrated, baffled affection. Naoya was his big brother in every way that mattered, and he did love him dearly, and it bothered him that he couldn't understand Naoya, that even though Naoya looked after him, and Naoya definitely knew Abel cared, there was still this gap between them that he couldn't bridge. He just couldn't figure Naoya out, not what he was like underneath and not how to make him happy. "He doesn't even have any pornography! And he's the one that showed me and Atsuro how to find stuff that was actually good."

"Seriously?" Haru asked him, amazed. Aya was the one who had introduced her to the good stuff too, although that was as part of the talk. Aya had taught her what to actually expect and demand out of sex and Gin had done the threatening of would-be boyfriends, even though Haru had never really done anything but one-night stands. She'd never felt a connection to any of them the way she did to Aya.

And yet… She suddenly realized that she was still holding Abel's hand, but there wasn't any impulse to let go.

"I just don't get him," Abel confessed, and she knew he'd never admit this to anyone else. "And he refuses to tell me anything, like he's trying to protect me. At first I just thought it was losing his parents like that, and he didn't want me to understand what that was like, but, now there's this." The lockdown, the comps, the Laplace Mail. Lovers, maybe plural.

"I don't get Aya either?" Haru admitted with a shrug. "That's because she's Aya. She's like a force of nature."

Abel nodded: that was just what Naoya was like.

"It was a pretty big surprise when she said, 'Haru, I think now is a good time for you to learn how to summon demons.'" Haru had thought she was joking.

"He just gave us the comps and demons came out of them. But he was watching over us when it happened." Abel looked a little downcast. "He had this all planned out."

"Yeah, that's Aya too. She's a tricky one. She's one of those teachers that gives you assignments that contain hidden lessons, and she's really good at bargaining." At getting gigs no matter what, at coordinating a band made out of people she'd found on the streets, like Haru and Gin.

"I should be happy that he's found someone who understands him, but…" It should have been me.

"I should be happy that they've found someone else they like," maybe even love, "but…" Why couldn't it have been me?

The two of them jumped apart when Yuzu flung the door open. "Hey, guys, they've got internet here! And my mom says the outside's been taken over by angels!"

"What?" Abel demanded.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, and they're the ones making our government do the lockdown!" Atsuro said, face pale. "If demons or even demon tamers get outside the lockdown, they won't leave! So the SDF will shoot anyone in here who tries to escape!" Atsuro had found that out from the conspiracy boards, not from Yuzu's mother. His usual boards had been shut down, probably by the governments: if he hadn't known a few codes and been able to figure out the hints of where to go…

Instead of complaining about Naoya dragging them into this, Yuzu was looking at Haru, biting her lip with worry.

"Gin had a death clock, the same as everyone else in here. I didn't get a clear enough look at Naoya to see if he had one." And Haru's was the same as theirs. "Aya and Naoya must have wanted us in here so they could keep us safe. If Naoya knew about demons, and I'm his cousin, and you're his apprentice…"

"Then the government or the angels might assume you knew how to summon demons even if you didn't," Yuzu whispered, then grimaced. Yeah, if Naoya had left her out of this, knowing that her two friends were stuck in the lockdown with demons rampaging and there was nothing she could do, she'd be even more furious with him. "I guess you were right, Atsuro." The comps were to let them fight the demons and change the death clock.

Abel glanced at the window. "I'm not sure we should stay here. Atsuro, do you know if they can figure out the net was accessed from within the lockdown?"

"You mean they could be coming for us?" Yuzu gasped.

Atsuro tried to act like normal. "Nah, don't worry, this is Naoya we're talking about. He wouldn't have set this rig up at someone's home if it would put them in danger, he'd have it hidden somewhere." No need to worry.

"Well, we should definitely come back here before it gets dark."

"Yeah," Atsuro agreed. "We don't have Amane to set up another ward."

"But the demons, and that weird guy who lied to us about calling his boss, and maybe that guy from the Shomonkai… they're all after Haru," Yuzu reminded them.

"So I shouldn't go back to my apartment, and Gin's is the next place they'd look if they know me. Mind if I hang with you guys?" she asked.

"Of course, Haru," Abel told her. "Maybe we can find you some different clothes…"

"Hey, what's wrong with what I have on?" she asked, leaning forward with her hands on her hips.

Quickly raising his eyes up to her face, he said, "They're fine, they're just… distinctive."

"Ah, I gotcha," she said, grinning.

"…You did that on purpose," he said, smiling with a hint of relief. At least she didn't mind: kind of like Midori, huh.

Maybe he should keep an eye out for Midori: just because she was popular online didn't necessarily mean she knew where any of her fans lived or could get in contact with them to get a place to stay. Her death clock, too…

"If Naoya and Gin come back," Yuzu said, "This will be the safest place to spend the night."

Atsuro agreed. "If they don't come back by midnight, then we should get out of here too, but…"

"It would be nice to sleep in a bed. And there's a steel drum contraption that looks like it's meant to heat up water downstairs, too," Yuzu said longingly. After sleeping on grass, she felt dirty, sweaty and a little itchy. "But the water isn't running inside."

"Too bad we can't use our demons to carry it from the park for us, huh Yuzu?" Atsuro asked.

Abel looked skeptical. "I'd be surprised if Naoya didn't think of that. You know how he is about keeping clean." And hot showers, since Naoya went for a run every morning.

"Yeah, remember what Miss Mari said about getting sick if we don't keep clean because of all this?" Atsuro agreed. "I'll start looking."

"Haru needs to change, and I'll," Abel glanced behind them, "Try and figure out what we can sleep on. Yuzu, would you mind seeing what there is to eat? Gin shouldn't mind help eating the perishables before they spoil, right?"

"Nah, you're my guests," Haru told him.

"Thanks, Haru!"

"Well, you did try to save me." So Haru shrugged. Hopefully the fangirl would wear off a bit. And hopefully Abel could figure out how to wash those sheets.

* * *

"Standing around there all afternoon, could you have been any more obvious?" Abel, who had taken second watch, recognized the familiar clack of wood-on-wood as well as the voice and nudged Haru and Atsuro, who were sleeping on either side of him.

"Hey, I distracted them, didn't I?"

"Yes, and now they might wonder if you had anything to do with it instead of Aya just 'vanishing into the demon realm.' And stealing my keycard last night to force me to track you down and bring you along… What if I'd actually needed it?"

Atsuro covered his mouth, trying to conceal a snort of laughter. Naoya, need a keycard to get past some building's security system? Especially if this was the Shomonkai they were talking about, when Naoya had worked there for weeks.

"Boys, boys," a female voice said, one that made Abel's eyebrows raise because it sounded _so much like Naoya_ when he was happy. The purr was more pronounced, but he could hear that smirk, half affection and half mockery, because Abel and Atsuro were idiots and yet he was at least somewhat fond of them anyway. "You're both pretty."

"Yes, I know," Naoya said, and he was definitely rolling his eyes.

"This is your own fault, you know. What did you _think _Gin was going to do if you didn't give him any way to help rescue me?"

"I _did_, he was needed here, protecting your safehouse. Now I need to figure out where we can retreat. The place I'd planned to use isn't contaminated enough by the demon world yet: humans haven't started avoiding it."

"We'll phantasm in to one of the buildings the SDF cleared out because they were overlooking the barricade," Aya said calmly, as though it was perfectly obvious and Naoya was being deliberately obtuse. "I know you're used to driving others away, making sure they don't want to protect you because they can't, but you won't do that to my 'rebellion against the purpose God made me for' and you can't wrap Gin in cotton wool, either. If he was someone who would be okay with that while their loved ones were in danger, we wouldn't love him, would we?"

"_You _love him," Naoya said, but it was a lie and he knew they knew it.

Aya whispered something that the four of them (Haru had woken Yuzu) couldn't make out and Naoya grumbled as Gin finally unlocked the apartment door. "I should avoid you, woman. You're obviously a trap Remiel set for me: there's no other reason you'd be incarnated _now _after all these millennia. I'm only staying with you now that I have what I need because Abel's other half should be drawn to you even if you don't know your father's side of the family."

Aya laughed. "So I'm a literal bastard and my other half just acts like one. Come here."

"I can't," Naoya said, before his mouth was silenced by lips, "allow myself," he said after he was released and before Aya pulled him in to shut him up again, "to be distracted," he finally finished, but it didn't sound like he was turning to go or pushing her away. "Or I'll fail, and my brother and I will perish, and I certainly won't see you again next life," he said, a hint of longing and regret clear in his voice.

"Inside," Gin said, pushing at the two of them so wooden sandals and high heels had to take a step inside the door for Naoya and Aya to stay balanced on that footwear. "And Aya will stop shutting you up when you stop saying stupid shit like not letting me help protect you two. Ribs..." Gin snorted. "When you two were split, Aya got all the brains," he grumbled.

And that was when he flipped the lightswitch on.

Gin, Naoya and a woman with black hair and green eyes, the inverse of Naoya's own just as Haru's orange was the inverse of Abel's blue stared down at the teenagers who carpeted their living room floor.

"The other who can speak the primal common tongue," Naoya said, and groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead. "It would have been so obvious, if only I hadn't been distracted."

"Naoya?" Atsuro asked, amazed?

"Atsuro, I am holding you personally responsible for making sure he," Naoya pointed at Abel, "doesn't get _her_," now he pointed at Haru, "pregnant. If he does, I will kill you."

"Seven billion grand-nieces and nephews are enough?" Aya quipped.

"_Exactly_. He's in too much danger right now, and even if it appears that yielding to the urge to reunite and screwing ourselves is inevitable, I'm not letting my brother be reduced to just part of God's damn breeding program. For that matter, if you wanted children in the first place, they would have to be Gin's." He somehow stepped through the morass of lanky teens and purloined winter clothing that served as mattress and pillows without tripping or breaking stride. "Speaking of screwing ourselves, I have a headache because of you, so get in here and take responsibility for it." And the endorphins released by sex would kill the pain in a way opium could only mimic: it was a testament to humanity's stupidity that 'I have a headache,' was considered a cliché reason _not _to have sex.

"Aya got all the romance, too."Gin put his hand to his own temples. "What are all of you doing here?" he asked them.

"What was that all about?" Haru asked them.

"Look, can it wait until morning? We just broke Aya out of the Shomonkai-"

"We?" Naoya's voice demanded from the open bedroom door.

Gin ignored him to continue, "And then we had to get back here without being followed or noticed by all the people sleeping outdoors or the helicopters up ahead." Thankfully there was a difference between being seen and being noticed, but there was an art to not attracting attention or sticking in people's minds.

"We'll explain everything in the morning," Aya reassured them with a big sisterly voice, and both Abel and Haru gave her a look, because they knew that was bullshit.

"He's used to me, and you don't have my practice," Naoya told her. "Now get in here so I can draw the silence ward on the door. As for you, Abel, I thought I told you that it wasn't safe to be seen with me. Get out of here, _now_, or I will have my demons throw you out."

"Is that because of the SDF or the angels?" Abel asked him. "And why are the demons here? They were talking about a 'Master' Bel-something."

"That's because 'Bel' _means _master. Now shut up or I will mute you."

Abel shut his mouth, because he'd never seen Naoya acting like this and seeing him so genuine, even if it was genuinely exhausted, stressed, cranky and demanding might let him understand his brother. Eventually. Well, for one thing, it seemed he was human after all.

"You can stay here tonight," Aya told them, "but you really do have to leave in the morning and not talk about whatever you've learned except when you're sure no one's listening. There are people after us, and there are going to be people after you. If the people after us find out about you, they'll go after you because you're easier targets and good hostages. If the people after you find out about us, we won't be able to protect you against them as well. The four of you need to focus on surviving right now, and being as anonymous as you can is the best protection you have. Now, I haven't seen Gin in over a week, so you kids have fun, and don't do half the things I would do!" She made her way through their bedding as easily as Naoya did, Gin grinning and following in their wake.

The door slammed behind them and the 'kids' looked at each other.

Yuzu yawned. "I don't care what he says, I'm not leaving in the morning until I've had another bath," she said, and rolled over next to Haru to go back to sleep as Atsuro stammered out his shock.

* * *

_In _Wilderness_, I decided to have Fumi be the one made from Cain's rib. However, I'd already had the idea that the demons could have been after Haru not just because of the song but because she was the one made from Abel's rib: since she was divided from his soul before he became the demon Bel, they can't sense his essence the way they do in Kazuya, but they still sense some power there. _

_It would also justify her knowing the Primal Common Tongue if she was neither a new soul created after the Ordeal without that knowledge nor one who had been on earth at the time, but rather still in storage in heaven, never incarnated because Abel died first. The angels communicate with song, so it seems those in heaven retained the Primal Common Tongue, or it can be read that way. _

_Of course, if Haru is Abel's other half and that's why she knows the language, then what about Aya? N**a**o**ya**, **Aya**… the MC's manga name, K**a**zu**ya**, continues the pattern. Even if this is a coincidence in our world, it doesn't have to be on the other side of the fourth wall. _


	2. Chapter 2

_And here we go back to see the point where this became an AU._

_There's a saying that 'the highest form of loyalty is dissent.' Because someone who speaks out to warn a nation or leader, or otherwise act against them, is putting their life in the hands of said nation or leader. Is trusting, believing, that they are capable of doing better than the path they are on. That whatever evil they are speaking out against is the aberration, and it is something that can be fixed, can be overcome. That their country is _better than that_. _

_While those who don't speak out because of fear clearly don't value their country enough to risk their lives for it. And those who don't see the problem don't care enough to examine the reality of the situation, don't love their country enough to _worry _about it. To want to protect it, even from itself. _

_The Holy Sophia is canon, present in the actual text of the Bible: some Orthodox churches believe she's a full aspect of God, equivalent to the Son and the Holy Ghost. __Besides overseeing creation and such, most of the stuff I have about her here is apocryphal/what heretics believed. But then, __Lucifer is entire apocryphal: going from the exact text of the Bible, Satan works for God and Lucifer doesn't exist, so yeah._

* * *

They were still here after tens of thousands of years.

Two long arcs of bone, white as ivory, without a hint of age or impurity. Taken from the cage humans had inside their bodies to protect their hearts, as frail as such a shield was against a demon's claws or the claws humans had learned to make for themselves, to kill their fellows.

Now, a human's flesh and soul were two separate things, but God had breathed into the earth to give it life, to infuse it with his own spirit in his own shape, and thus Adam was born. The combination of God's creation and God himself, soul and matter.

Then God made Lilith to love Adam, but the love of those possessing free will could not be coerced, yet God did not wish Adam to share his own loneliness.

Remiel still didn't understand how Adam could have been lonely, surrounded by the animals that loved him, as God was surrounded by the adoring angels. They loved them. They had been _made _for that purpose, so how could they not be good enough while beings that could turn against him, could _hurt _him, were?

That was the question Lucifer fell for, although he hadn't phrased it as a question. When God told him to kneel before his new creation, his son, when Adam was still innocent and pure, Lucifer had still refused. Still warned God that by giving this creature choice he had _ensured _that it would turn against him, and what if it made more? What if it made something stronger than God, mightier than their creator? If that new God had the power to strike him down? Lucifer had refused to kneel before any master but God himself.

And the Holy Sophia, the embodiment of the wisdom of their creator, had smiled as Lucifer was struck down for his disobedience and defiance.

Sariel, Anael: so many believed that it was only his refusal, his disobedience, his pride that Lucifer had fallen for instead of his refusal to acknowledge Man as his superior, as one he must obey after God himself. They believed that he was right about humanity, about Adam. That humans did nothing but hurt God: Oh, there was Enoch, but God had made him into an angel, so he was worthy because he was one of them. They thought that free will was an aberration that must be stamped out with punishment, with curses upon curses. After all, had not God cursed Adam and Eve when they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the sealed form of the Holy Sophia? Had not God cursed Cain when he killed his brother?

And yet, Remiel knew, those curses were both mercies. God had granted Adam freedom from Eve, who God had originally placed above him, as his controller. God had granted Cain long life and protection from any who might hurt his still-beloved child. Yet even Sariel's Eye only saw the cruelty. Only _wanted _to see the cruelty, and think that was what humans deserved.

Remiel did not understand his creator's design. None of them were capable of that, not even Metatron. Many of his brethren seemed to have forgotten that. Metatron was only an angel now: he was no longer of the race akin to God, so how could he understand Him? Yet Remiel was wise enough not to share those thoughts. His name and his task were God's mercy, so it was only proper for him to show too much kindness towards humanity. After all, was not God too soft towards them? Did he not let those base creatures keep causing him sorrow?

Yet they were not base creatures. They, not the angels, were the true children of God. That was why the original Bel had been such a threat: His grandson, imbued with the power of the demons, the power of the chaos that ran contrary to God's designs (or did it?). He could have become God's equal: he had defied him, cast the angels out of the human world save for those who had fallen because they gave humanity knowledge that was then used for evil.

Save for those who did as God had once wished, and helped humanity… No, such thoughts were blasphemy.

Or were they merely treason?

How long had it been since God had ceased to walk among them?

These bones contained the union of flesh and soul possessed by the children of Adam, with life breathed into them by God: their Eves, when Eve had been created to guide Adam on the right path, to watch over him. And if Lucifer had not tricked her into believing that to taste of the fruit and gain all of God's wisdom was best for Adam, he would be in the garden still. For Eve had been created out of a portion of the soul of God, because of his love for his son, and so she loved Adam before God.

Remiel had failed to lead Cain back onto the correct path. Every life he became more and more filled with hatred, and could Remiel truly blame him for this? When that hatred was born of compassion for all the human suffering he saw? For the suffering of his brother?

The brother Cain had knelt before, when he returned from the demon world. The brother he had pledged his eternal loyalty, his eternal service, all his lives and his very soul, to atone for that act of murder.

That act which Remiel truly believed had been an accident, even if there was supposed to be no such thing in God's design. Cain had not meant to kill Abel. He was not the shepard, he did not understand the fragility of flesh or the power a metal tool in human hands had to kill until it was too late.

Cain had confessed, as he had failed to confess his act to God. He never repeated the sin: he had made it up to his brother countless times. And yet he was not forgiven, not granted mercy. Not allowed into heaven or allowed to be reborn as an innocent the way Adam and Eve were.

Remiel did not understand this. Sariel thought he did: Sariel was wrong. How could he watch humans and their suffering, their efforts not to sin and their own bodies turned against them and not understand?

Remiel had a guess. He hoped it was wrong.

Remiel did not have permission to take these two bones, these two souls, and plant them within humans to be born in the new way. Yet he did have God's permission, God's order, to do whatever he could to help Cain, on the day he was not cast out, but rather fled, unable to face his sin or his parents' grief.

Metatron did not have the authority to override God's orders, and no angel should have to go to him for permission to follow God's orders. Many had forgotten that, and the remainder, like Remiel, knew better than to speak of it.

After Abel's shattered soul was flung into the underworld for the second time, only one piece had managed to claw its way back into the human realm, seeking not vengeance against God but to be reborn alongside his brother so Cain would not blame himself for a second death, this time because he wasn't strong enough instead of because he was too strong.

Now, Abel's power had almost fully recovered. The shards were gathering together, at the same time the angels began to speak of the necessity of another ordeal. This internet allowed humans to lie and harm others without consequences to themselves far too easily, yes. It was a temptation to do evil, but did not communication allow the spreading of the Word? All humans to understand that they were all children of God?

For all communication to be stripped from them… There was no mercy in that. Many angels had no contact with humans since Adam, and Adam did not need food or drink. The humans that lived now were much weaker. They were only able to build that tower, this network, because they came together.

Most angels did not understand that if humans were stripped of the power to communicate, to work for the benefit of each other, they would die.

Most angels did not understand how death, the shedding of the physical body to become pure spirit, a being closer in nature to an angel, could possibly be a bad thing.

Somehow, the ordeal must be prevented, humanity must be saved. Yet Remiel did not have the power or understanding necessary to do this thing, and he could not interfere in the lives of humans the way other angels dearly wished to, not even for a good cause.

The Holy Sophia would have, if it was possible, but God had sealed away his own wisdom, something else Remiel could not understand. Yet he'd still placed that tree in the garden: had he meant for his children to someday taste of it? Some heretics had believed that the Holy Sophia was sealed away because she saw that all of creation was irredeemably corrupt, that God had sealed away the part of himself that knew this as a mercy, so it would not destroy this world, but Remiel knew that was not so.

He was God's mercy, after all. And the more he saw of that corrupt world, the more he knew that it should not be destroyed, it must be redeemed. God and God's children had suffered so much: how could a being that loved God wish for all of it to have been for nothing, to end in nothing but their Father's loneliness and tears?

Jealousy.

Jealousy had taken the heavenly host, had blinded even Sariel's eye.

And Remiel could not even redeem one human, one child of God who possessed such a deep love. Not just of his brother, but of God himself: it was jealousy that drove Cain to violence, to kill the brother he loved and bring sadness to his beloved creator.

God had ordered the angels to love Adam as they loved him, and they had obeyed and knelt. All except Lucifer, who had tried to tell them all that this simply could not work.

Yet now Lucifer aided humanity, or at least thought he was, by unleashing chaos. Why were all the angels who served man as God intended fallen?

Almost all of them.

He was God's Mercy: his foolish mercy, so many believed.

He did not know how to help Cain, much less Abel.

Yet these two souls had been created for that purpose. Would have inherited Adam and Eve's taste of the Holy Sophia. Once upon a time, humans knew the difference between right and wrong, possessed God's own knowledge of good and evil.

Yet they'd still chosen to lie to him. To do evil onto him. Because they were afraid the Father they loved would be angry and hurt if he knew they had disobeyed.

They had chosen not to do no evil, but to do no harm. To try to prevent strife from coming to the garden, even in such a clumsy way.

Remiel did share one belief with his fellow angels: that love, love was the most important thing of all. Even a human's love for another human instead of the highest form of love, the love of God.

Could love prevent Abel from misusing the power he might regain? Could an aspect of Cain whose hands were not stained with his brother's blood let him forgive himself?

So he prayed, and so he believed, as he placed the first bone, then flew to attend the birth of Cain's newest incarnation.

Even as a child, red eyes could still see him, still glare at him in frustration, for where had God's mercy been when the kingdom was toppled, when his brother was slain by the forces of God? Where was justice, either, when God's angels committed the same sin Cain had, except deliberately, and were not punished for it?

God's mercy had failed. God's mercy and compassion: there was not enough of it. It was not enough to spare all those lives. Yet Remiel loved God, so he did have faith that one day, it would be enough. One day Cain would be able to let go of his hatred, of both God and himself.

* * *

"I am sorry I cannot do more to help you," the angel Remiel told her.

"Is Jezebel truly more powerful than an angel of the lord?" the child asked him. She was a sinner: humans were not capable of living in this world without sinning, without harming others. They could do so out of simple ignorance in countless ways, not knowing that what they did harmed others. Yet Amane was truly dedicated to the good of this world, to helping her brothers and sisters, the other children of God. The fact that she trusted him, when she was taught that angels and God himself were evil and wished to do only harm to humanity was proof that she had as pure a soul as a human could have: there was not enough evil in her for her to truly believe there was evil in others. She rose above the blind hatred she was taught to reach for the light of God and truth.

If only his own kind were so noble.

"Yes," he admitted freely. "I am only a servant. But that is not the only reason I am unable to overcome Jezebel. As an angel, I am not meant to interfere with… I am not meant to harm humans, for you are the children of the God I serve. And the soul of the core of Jezebel, the soul of the ancient King of Bel, is human. That is what allowed him to become such a powerful demon, and allows Belberith and Jezebel to grow stronger and stronger, for humans are the children of God, and this soul has chosen to become a demon god. Not out of lust for power," he told her, to forestall her judgment, "but for the same reason your father sought the help of even a demon. He learned of something that shattered his trust in God, and made him believe that he needed power, any power, even the power of demons and chaos, in order to protect his brothers and sisters.

"When he returned to the human world, he created a country where peace endured for thousands of years, and humans began to advance, to discover for themselves tools they were taught by angels before the flood, and then lost. To create, and by doing so they became closer in nature to their Father, for he is the creator of all things. To understand the world around them and work to better it is a noble thing, born of love for God's creation." Some felt so much love for the core of that creation that they could not believe that the hand they felt there, the maker and truth that they loved as man should love God, was the God of the Bible, who ordered genocides and committed petty cruelties. No, they believed that which shaped the universe was surely above such things, and the faith of those seekers of truth humbled him.

"Yet with that power the King of Bel could have done great harm, could have reached heaven and threatened God himself, and so he was shattered, his kingdom was destroyed, and his people rendered unable to speak to each other so they could not pass their knowledge on to their children. But Jezebel and Belberith care nothing for this. They are purely demonic, born of that lust for power and vengeance the king felt after seeing his people killed. The core of him was reborn as a human, to comfort his brother in his sorrow. If he wins the War of Bel, if he is able to control that power of chaos and use it for good, to lead humanity to righteousness and abjure the demons to harm none, then this world will surely be saved." Surely. "Until then, I will do all I can to protect you, not simply because you have opened your heart to my voice, but because you are one of His beloved children."

* * *

"Besides, I follow no god," Naoya told Amane, and walked past her before she replied.

"But you did once, didn't you? Twice. And you would follow the God you chose to serve again."

He whirled on her, and though she knew the power he possessed his eyes had never frightened her before, not when she knew the true nature of that mark. It was not Cain's wrath that stained them blood-red: it was the wrath of God, a warning that anyone who harmed this child of his would have the pain returned sevenfold. To harm even a sinner was such a great evil in the eyes of God… She had chosen to have faith in that truth.

"Now where did you hear that?" he asked her. And what did she think she could do about it? "Belberith is a demon: humanity can only be free if we are led by a human."

So he openly declared himself against the Shomonkai in one of their fortresses, the server room itself? He must be very certain that she could be silenced, one way or another. "But you would not care that much if Belberith won, would you? He would be cruel to humanity, but we would survive, would still have the power of communication. And the soul of the King of Bel would be complete again, and eventually overpower the mind of Belberith."

"It would be another Dark Age, but we've already suffered so many thanks to _him," _he agreed. "Is Jezebel trying to frighten me? Do they believe that they can suppress the true king's soul?" He smirked. "She can try her luck now, if she likes. I'll crush her and her lord!"

"Indeed," Amane acknowledged. "For the sake of your brother, Remiel has faith in your victory."

"Remiel? What's my stalker up to this time? I've wanted to ask him a few questions." And he would not hesitate to extract the answers from her, Amane could see it in those eyes.

"You have seen so much evil, so much pain," Amane said, and this time she was speaking for herself. "You wish to sit at your brother's left hand, because you do not believe you are worthy to sit at his right. You will leave all of the final choices up to him, as you did when he reigned, because you believe that you would choose the crueler path, that everything you will ever do is tainted by one moment of yielding to rage and pain." The priestess' face remained impassive, as she was taught. "You believe that because you did evil, you are evil, and because you believe you are evil, you don't try as hard as you should to be kind, and mindful of others. You have surrendered responsibility to him, so he is still the God you follow, the savior you believe in, even now. You could wait another thousand years, if you must, with faith that whatever kept you from reviving him this time you could overcome, that you could do anything because you _would _do anything for his sake, and this world's. Remiel hopes that you will come to believe in yourself again, for you as well are a child of God."

Naoya clenched and unclenched a fist slowly, finger by finger. "Is that why he released that piece of me? So I'd have a mirror to see myself in? She's nothing like me, just like Belberith is nothing like my brother."

"Then at least you will have someone to understand you, to give you compassion. The mark is on your forehead, but His curse and blessing is upon you both, for you share the same soul."

He snorted. "Like they'd give me more power, like they'd let me have someone else who remembered other than you angels. I will not break. I will not fail him again."

"Break? You think he was trying to break you?" Amane said, hurt on Remiel's behalf.

"Ask him. They don't lie, although what they believe often has nothing to do with the truth. Sariel won't even try to conceal it from you: he's bragged about it, how I will break, I will kneel before God." Ha! "Even if I am never free of this curse, humanity _will _be free of you angels." This he promised, and not only to her. To him, she was only a telephone to convey his declaration, a window to shatter: she was nothing to him, not next to his brother and his enemy.

He had closed his heart to everyone else: he had become cruel, as cruel as the God he hated for his cruelty, for seeing humans as pawns that existed only to serve.

Amane wanted to try to tell him that, but she already knew that he wouldn't listen, or he wouldn't _care_. He would wallow in those depths if that was what it took, but, "Would your brother really want you to hurt others for his sake?"

"I will do it if it needs to be done, and if I do, it's better if he hates me," he told her honestly. "If I have to fight him, he should hate me." Not that that was any of her business. "Do you know who I am?"

"You are Naoya Minegeshi, programmer of Babel's vessel. You are also Cain, brother of Abel, whose mind and memories make up Babel. You have done everything you can to bring about Father's vision, only better than he thought was possible, because Belberith is cruel while your brother isn't." She bowed, because she owed him thanks.

"You're a strange girl," he murmured.

"I will take that as a compliment." To be strange, out of all the people he had seen in tens of thousands of years?

"I've found mine. Where is the other one?" he asked, speaking to Remiel again.

Still, at least he'd looked at her and seen _Amane _instead of Remiel, even if only for an instant. "He will find her," she reassured him.

His grimace made her curious. "You don't want him to find her?"

"This is a trap." Obviously. "I might not be able to resist her, but I won't let her stop me from fighting. And I won't let the other one take the rest of my brother's soul."

"Isn't she helping you?" Already? So soon after they'd met? Even though he must have told her the truth, that he was Cain and what she was feeling was only the produce of predestination and a shared soul. Such a lonely, sad and bitter soul.

He looked away, unwilling to lie but not able to trust reality either, not when it came from an angel.

"And why would Abel's steal his power when to harm him would be to harm herself?"

"You really don't know much about humans, do you?" He laughed in her face. "We harm ourselves all the time," were his parting words as he left the server room and the Shomonkai behind.


	3. Evening

_To warn some people, since my usual beta had one of her NoYay triggers hit by a scene that touched on this same issue in another fic: _

_This chapter is supposed to be creepy, not romantic (sexual yes, romantic no). I mean, think about Adam and Eve. Actually think about it, and for the SMT version include the stuff about Lilith. It's basically soul-mutilation-based mind control for the sake of creating a bond between 'two' people who are actually one person and a bit torn out of them. If you're too bothered by any of it to keep reading, than that really just means that you understand too much about consent issues to be a Twilight fan, so feel free to skip to the end or even the next chapter _

'_Inspiration' really is breathing in the soul/essence of a god- remember Gale's demon/atma form from Digital Devil Saga? It's a pretty good expression of the concept, although the Western form comes to us from the Greeks. One of the possibilities is that the soul enters the body with the first breath, since God breathed life into Adam._

_Since the rest of the explanation includes spoilers, I'll put it the end of the chapter._

* * *

"If this is a waste of my time…"

"And why would I do that?" Loki asked the grumpy human immortal. "It's so much more thrilling when you're plotting. I'm looking forward to the War of Bel. It's in my best interests to make it interesting, hmm?"

"I'm not paying for your drinks," Cain warned him as they walked towards the bar. "Or the cover charge," he added as he saw the people lined up at the entrance. Wonderful, he'd be trapped in Loki's company for even longer before he found out if he was going to be killing him tonight or not.

Wait, was that… "Hmm."

"See someone you recognize?" Loki wondered. Already.

"That's none of your concern," Naoya told him, putting his hands in his sleeves primly. Well well well. He was aware that Yuzu was into the indie music scene, he'd run background checks on all his brother's friends, but the girl was very sensitive. If she was here willingly, that meant that whatever Loki brought him here for couldn't be demonic in origin. If she _stayed_ in line ahead of him instead of her subconscious finding some reason for her to get out of here now that Loki had arrived, then it was more powerful than he was.

Someone with a subconscious demon radar was a lucky find indeed, just in case any of them managed to ambush his brother unexpectedly. At least she'd know which way to run. It meant that being trapped in an area crawling with demons with no way out would be hell for her, but that wasn't Naoya's concern.

Well, she wasn't leaving, so there had to be something here. Either that or she just liked the band that much. If this turned out to be a bust, Naoya would have to start looking for a replacement, because there would clearly be something wrong with her survival instincts and she was simply a tool to keep his brother alive.

Hmph, D-Va. Diva, or did the horizontal line mean the missing letter was Deva? He tried to imagine one of the Four Devas in a rock band, but it wasn't likely. Still, since the Shomonkai's plan involved assassinating one of them, this might be a good omen. Artists were more likely to have power, although most of the time performers just had some form of mind control masquerading as charisma. Possibly this club was all the people they could fascinate at once: those who could turn their songs into spells enchanting their listeners were the ones who got contracts. Aside from a few tables that seemed to be taken by fellow indie artists, Naoya doubted there were more than a handful here who would recognize real musical skill if _he _sat down that that keyboar-

It wouldn't have hit him so hard if he hadn't unsealed his senses, trying to get at least an hour's warning of any more of the Bel demons entering the human world after that ritual implanted Jezebel in an infant and first drew his attention to the Shomonkai. It was also handy for keeping track of his brother: he'd know that soul anywhere.

But this, this soul was his. Except new, and clean enough that this had to be its first incarnation. _Her_ first incarnation.

Over at the bar, Gin paused. What was Aya staring at like that? He followed her gaze to one of the new regulars, a gigolo, and some cosplayer with silver hair and a custom haori. The cosplayer was staring back at Aya with something that looked like confusion mingled with… was that fear? He had a good poker face, but Gin was a bartender. The gigolo looked very amused, and after a few seconds he started waving his hand in front of his companion's face, grin getting wider and wider when that didn't make the cosplayer… Damn, that was no cosplayer. You couldn't survive as a street punk without being able to read threat levels, and if he wasn't carrying _something _concealed, Gin was an American beer.

So what the hell was he staring at Aya like that for?

Gin relaxed a little and took his hand off what he kept beneath the bar when he saw that Aya didn't look afraid at all, just puzzled. Was that a, "Do I know you?" look? No, more like a, "I _know _I've seen you before, but I can't place you." Well, the dyed hair and the haori probably explained that. If it weren't for the reading glasses attached to it and the casual clothes underneath, Gin would have gone back to his initial assessment that this guy was a cosplayer. Nah, just an eccentric who walked around in a custom haori. What was that pattern on it? Oh, that explained the eccentricity. Criminal programmers who broke into systems were called crackers. Or he was a fan of _The Matrix_, one or the other.

The gigolo was grinning like this had just made his day and took out a permanent marker. _This _time the man's hand grabbed his wrist before the guy could start drawing on his face, and Gin heard a crack.

Holy shit. Who broke someone's wrist in front of a bar full of witnesses without even thinking about it… Phew, the gigolo was just shaking out his hand, pouting a little, so the grind-crack that made Gin think of the old days and broken bones must have come from somewhere else.

Aya smothered a laugh, and while Aya was friendly to everyone, Gin had only seen that level of, 'I like you!' directed at him, Haru and her city. Haru didn't make him jealous: if anything it was as close as he was ever going to get to putting a ring on Aya's finger. With her around they were practically married with children. Another guy still worried him a bit, even though Aya had made it very clear that if he didn't complain when she brought home other women for him, he had no right to complain when it came to her bringing home men. It wasn't that he minded: it was generally kind of an ego boost, because even if he wasn't a streetfighter any more, it was pretty clear to them as soon as he took his shirt off that he could snap them like a toothpick if they were stupid enough to think they could take Aya back to _their _place ever. And there really was a thrill in pouncing on her after watching her with some other guy and making her forget _all _about him. Just the thought made him grin, but the grin faded when Aya didn't even glance at him. She was still looking at that guy.

D-Va's set was supposed to start soon, he thought as the seconds ticked on, and Aya was still leaning forward like that, as though willing the distance between them not to exist. Like she had to know who this guy was.

What was even weirder was that the guy was stuck between being helplessly drawn to her and fear of that helplessness, like if he wasn't frozen he'd be getting the hell out of here. The gigolo's grin was looking less and less friendly, more and more like he was enjoying those hints of terror, like he wanted this guy to freak out in front of the whole bar or whatever. Whatever they were, they weren't friends, not the way the gigolo clearly wanted something nasty and entertaining to happen to him.

That made up Gin's mind for him and he headed towards where the two of them were standing. "Hey, are you okay?" He didn't get any more response when he waved his hand in front of the guy's face than the gigolo had.

"This is Gin," the gigolo introduced him. "The bar's owner and _her _boyfriend," he said as gloatingly as though he was tossing a match into a barrel of oil.

When nothing dramatic happened, the jerk pouted. "Are you just going to stare at her all evening? Well, they'll know something's wrong when she doesn't start playing. And isn't that one of your dear brother's friends over there? I'm sure he'd hear all about it later, what a big scene you made." He leaned forward. "And then _he _might come down here, to try to figure out what happened. You know how inseparable the two of you are: where you are, he will be, so where _she _is…"

This time, Gin distinctly heard that punch break the jerk's nose, but the jerk just kept grinning. "Nothing has ever made you react like this, not except your dear brother." And then the purple-suited bastard was just… gone.

Gin blinked, because he knew damn well he hadn't had anything to drink. "So this was a setup." That was the important thing. And it looked like this guy was the victim, and if whatever was going on was hitting Aya too, that made it Gin's problem. "Anything I can do?"

Gin couldn't make out the whisper, he didn't even recognize the language, but he knew _get me out of here_ when he saw it on someone's face. "Right." Outside wasn't an option, since the people in line wouldn't have anything to do but listen, so Gin grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into a storeroom. He didn't resist, which was a relief.

Pushing him onto one of the couches people used for breaks, Gin turned on a light and rested one knee on the couch to get a look at this guy's eyes. "Wow, how does that work?" The guy's pupils were _blown_, those were no contacts and he definitely wasn't an albino: their eyes only looked red because of the arteries, while this was a damn good imitation of a red iris. "Surgery or something?" he asked, disbelieving even though he knew the punk scene and he'd seen people who had done weirder stuff to their bodies because they felt like it. Gin had seen yellow (Haru had yellow), and the weird orange color that was supposed to be the yellow plus something with the pigment that was letting the vessels show through, but this was new.

The guy shook his head. "Mark…" Then he seemed to break out of the trip a little, looking up at Gin. "You've been in contact with her: if even _that's _affecting me…" He put his head in his hands.

"What the hell did that guy dose you with?" Gin demanded, because for it to affect _Aya? _Who had managed to dose her? Aya knew better than to take drinks from strangers or leave hers unattended, and this was Gin's bar: he made her drinks. She'd been fine until she saw this guy, or he saw her.

"I wish," the man said, too despairingly to curse. "Love potions have counterspells. I can't kill her, it doesn't work like that for humans."

Gin would have grabbed the front of his shirt and asked him what the hell he was thinking, to talk about killing Aya as an option, but counterspells? Humans? Either this guy was a mental patient or whatever that guy had given him had seriously fucked with his head. Gin had met someone who had paranoia induced: it wasn't pretty.

"Look, where's your wallet?" Gin asked, trying to talk soothingly, the way he would to a freaked-out kid or an animal. "Let's see who I can call."

The man grabbed his arm. "No, you can't, he'll find out. He can't come here or this will happen to him, Loki won't left that to chance…"

"He?" Gin replayed that conversation. "Your brother?"

The man nodded.

"Alright, if you're worried your family's in danger, I promise not to call," Gin said, to get him to calm down.

Shit. Yakuza, had to be. Targeted at this guy and his family, Aya and their independent bar, or both? Well, that would explain why this guy knew streetfighting and he was carrying… Possibly a lot of stuff, with that getup and those sleeves of his.

The man relaxed a little, and let Gin pat him down for his wallet and get a look at his ID. "So, what's your name?" Gin asked the guy.

"Cain."

Damn. If he didn't know his own name? "Says Naoya here."

"That's just…" the man shrugged dismissively.

"Fake ID, huh." Gin held it up. "Looks pretty good."

Then Aya walked in, and he watched Cain pull away, back against the back of the couch, as she crouched over him. He looked like a deer in the headlights, except one bright enough to know that there was going to be a crash.

"Who are you?" she asked, half-sitting on his lap, cupping his face in her hands as he grabbed the back of the sofa as though he was clinging to it for support.

His mouth opened, as though he was desperate to say something but couldn't think of anything that would get him out of this as she leaned closer and closer to his face as though looking for something, or seeing something and just not able to figure out _what _she was seeing that had her so interested, forget what it meant.

Gin realized that the man was holding his breath, and said, "Hey, Aya," only to be completely ignored. Face to face, the two of them fit somehow, and the fear on the man's face bothered him even more as it started to be overpowered by longing. Longing for something that terrified him, that would kill him.

Moth to a flame, but this was Aya. She wasn't going to eat him alive.

After a moment more he lost the fight, had to draw in a breath, and the fight went out of him. Whatever caused this must have something to do with pheromones or whatever, because then Aya's lips opened and it was like they were breathing the same air, tasting each other, and somehow it was one of the most sensual things Gin had ever seen; Aya's eager hunger and even the way he trembled, because it was with _need_.

"This is a trap," the stranger whispered to her, and she captured those words with her lips.

"What is this?" her beautiful voice whispered in reply, low only because she didn't need to speak any louder.

"Inspiration. The soul entering the body with breath," he managed to say, but thinking about it made him lean up now, to taste more of Aya's.

"Mmm," she agreed. "Only a song could express this..." The words trailed off into another breath.

"That's not…" What it meant, but that didn't matter. "We have the same soul." Dreamily, as though to himself, he said, "Father wasn't like this, but they weren't ever apart, not for _so long…_"

All Gin was actually clear on about this was that it was definitely something with pheromones, the guy was still tripping out and it ought to be illegal for someone to be giving off 'save me' and 'fuck me through the mattress' vibes at the same time. He wasn't even especially into guys, and although this Cain was handsome enough, although in a weird way, he definitely didn't have the body of a girl under there, not when that was lean muscle Gin had felt. Maybe it was the way he had Aya on top of him and the way it looked like they really were feeding on each other somehow, bits of soul mingling in the breath they exchanged. As though some equilibrium was being reached, the two of them mixing together until the same person would be looking out through both green eyes and red.

"Wait, Aya," he said, grabbing her arm. "Look at him. That bastard slipped him something. You can't…" Grind down on him like that: he wasn't in his right mind, even if at least Gin had gotten him away from the bastard in the purple. He knew that pimps tried to get the street girls and boys addicted to all kinds of nasty shit to control them, but this was new. "We need to get him to the hospital."

"Mmm," she said, clearly ignoring his words but not ignoring him: she pulled him down by his coat.

"He's not a part of us," the man told her, but still covered Gin's lips with his own for a moment as Gin sputtered, although it seemed more like he was judging something than trying to make out. "He's… your boyfriend?" Was that what the gigolo had said?

"Um," Aya agreed, nodding, kissing Gin next as though to taste Cain's lips, an indirect kiss. "My lover," she said with possessive pride and then pushed the stunned Gin towards Cain, as though to show him off by making them kiss.

"You can't," Cain said, turning his mouth away. "You have someone that isn't us. I, I never have. You've found happiness with someone, you can't throw your own choices away for what you were made for." He sounded almost desperate.

"Who said anything about giving him up?" she wondered, recapturing Cain's lips with a breath even though their lips had never quite touched, as though the air between them was a tangible thing and they were tasting it to taste the core of each other.

"If you love her," Cain managed to whisper, "Get her out of here." Then his eyes snapped fully open and met Aya's, who froze.

"What… She's not breathing!"

Cain almost screamed at him, "Get her out of here before it wears off!" You idiot!

"I'll…" Gin tipped Aya down onto the couch, grabbed Cain and dragged him into the next room, or rather supply closet.

He sighed with relief. "That works too."

"What the hell did you do to her?" Gin demanded, shaking him.

"Paralysis. It will wear off fast." When Gin let him go Cain started breathing hard. "No, it wasn't physical breath, that won't work." This time he was the idiot, he clearly thought, shaking his head. "Damn Loki, and damn you Remiel."

"What the hell is going on?" Gin growled.

"I don't know! I've only seen one case of this before, my parents, and they didn't act like this," Cain snarled right back at him. "That bastard took part of my soul when I was a child, and somehow it ended up in her." He pointed at the door. "Then Loki noticed her somehow and brought me here to see what would happen. And if my other half is here, then Remiel will make sure my brother's is too, even if she isn't drawn to my other half on her own!" He looked about ready to tear his hair out. "I need to keep them apart, if this happens to him too…"

Gin sighed. "Damn it, you're still out of it."

"I wish."

"Come on, talking about souls?"

Cain looked at him, clearly debating with himself whether to give up on Gin being any help at all and just leave him ignorant, or slap him in the face with Cain's version of reality so he stopped jabbering about how this wasn't possible and started contributing. "If part of me didn't think you were worth keeping around," he said, sighed, and _pulled_.

"This is relatively easy," Cain lectured him as though this was some kind of class as Gin flailed. "Untrained humans do it to themselves all the time: it's called an out of body experience. The obvious danger is that something else can move in while you're gone. Now, you're probably going to say that you might have gotten exposed to something too at this point," he mused as he pulled Gin even further out of his body.

That was when the door broke down – this used to be a bathroom before the remodeling, so it could still be locked from the inside – and Aya demanded, "Put him back!"

"You could feel that?" Hmm. "Alright, I was just trying to prove a point," he said annoyed, and let go. Gin snapped back into his body. "If you're able to threaten me for his sake…" That was a relief.

"What kind of summoner are you, and what is this?" she demanded, narrowed green eyes now hard as jade meeting red.

"Summoner? You know the term?"

"My music can summon the demon world, so I had to learn a little."

He grinned with violent delight, suddenly so different from the man he'd seemed to be on that couch. "Your first incarnation, and you're already reaching for the power of the demon world: you really _do _have my soul."

"_Your _soul?"

"Eve was made from Adam's rib. Their first two children also had a part of them taken away, but I killed Abel before either of the parts that were taken were made into humans."

As Gin and Aya were trying to figure out whether or not they could seriously believe that Cain/Naoya continued. "The only reason you would be incarnated _now_ is that Remiel wants you to distract me from making sure my brother wins the War of Bel, and then there's an ordeal to prevent or humanity will drop back to before the Stone Age, _if _it survives without the ability to communicate. And if you're here, somewhere out there is my brother's other half, a landmine waiting for _him _to step on…" During the lecture, Cain stepped closer and closer to Aya, trying to intimidate her, and once again Gin could see the point where desperate need overwhelmed whatever he'd been feeling at the time and he reached for her shoulders like a man possessed.

She slapped him to make him wake the hell up.

Jumping back (out of range) with trained reflex, he touched his hand to his cheek. "Thank you. At least you're resisting it. I was right: this is your first lifetime and it's hitting me this hard because… That means the other one will be able to think much more clearly than my brother, and he doesn't remember his other lives." So he wouldn't know why he should resist, or have the discipline to.

"I need to stay away from you," Naoya said, and Gin could see him ruthlessly suppress the flicker of longing in his eyes when he looked at her to evaluate her. "Him. I can explain what you need to know to him instead of you, he can try to identify the other one and I'll make sure Yuzu doesn't drag my brother here." Cain grimaced.

Wait, Gin knew that name. "Yuzu? High school girl?"

"She's my brother's friend and clearly a fan of your band."

Aya folded her arms. "Maybe that's the trap. Do you really think you can stay away without thinking about me and having to resist coming here every second?"

"…No," he admitted after a long pause, looking at her. "But don't you get it? Eve, you, the otherone: of you were created as babysitters, and then for a breeding program! I won't let part of myself be reduced to that! Not by _him!_"

"You mean God?" Aya asked, taking a step forward, and Gin could see both the kind of concern she had for him and Haru sometimes and a hint of that force that pulled them together. "If… your parents," Adam and Eve, and this was crazy, "Were okay, and you think the difference is that you were alone for…" How long?

"I'm not going to make you cheat on your lover to, to…"

"Who said anything about cheating?" Aya wondered.

Cain grumbled. "I am counting on him to keep you away from me because I can't say no! Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned jealousy?" he complained, tilting his head a little toward Gin since he could quite turn away from Aya. "Cain? Evil? Contaminating her?"

"Are you?" Gin asked him. "From where I'm standing, it looks like she's got more control than you do." Convincing Gin he was evil wasn't going to work, since if he was, wouldn't it be better if Aya had a leash on him? Gin knew what she'd done to turn him around.

There were those 'save me' eyes again, but this time Gin realized that what half of him was begging for was an excuse to give in.

"You're not having sex tonight," Gin told Aya firmly. "I'm still not convinced that bastard in the purple didn't slip him something. But you can do… Whatever you were doing, and if you're still like this in the morning…" Then Gin was going to have to figure out whether he actually believed this and what he was going to do about it, because breeding program? His Aya? Exactly what the hell was going on and whose face was he going to have to rearrange with his fists for putting that look in the eyes of someone who wasn't his Aya. Still, the more he saw them standing like this, next to each other, the more right it seemed. If they really were one person, then the Aya half loved him, right? So the rest of it… He didn't know what he was going to do, but maybe he'd be able to get some actual answers in the morning.

After he managed to let the band know that Aya wasn't feeling well (fortunately, there were a lot of other Indie musicians in the audience and from the sound upstairs they managed to find one of Aya's friends who knew the songs well enough to plug the gap) it was pretty tough to keep enforcing the no sex rule with the two of them practically making out over him, finally going to sleep pressed against either side of him to be as close as possible to each other.

* * *

_At the root of it, the creation of Eve was an attempt to override humanity's free will in a very blatant way to begin with. Not just Eve's free will, after Lilith decided she didn't actually love Adam, but Adam's as well, because why would he favor someone he'd just met above the adoring sentient animals he could talk to that had been with him for as long as he existed? _

_As I point out in another fic, it's really self-love and the need for completion, and Gin is quite right to be putting it in terms of pheromones/date rape drugs, even though it's using metaphysics instead of biochemistry to induce sex/attraction even if people otherwise wouldn't want it. He's definitely making the right call to see if this wears off, or if sating the need to connect their soul will remove the urge to connect via sex, because at the moment Aya isn't informed and Naoya is not consenting. _

_Naoya is very lucky Gin was there, otherwise it would have been rape because he definitely Did Not Want but he would not have been able to make himself stop her, and that would have caused his feelings about Aya to get mixed up with the hatred he has for himself and then he would have killed her, Gin would have tried to kill him, Haru might have ended up getting used for the summoning program and then disposed of before the game to prevent her from doing the same to his little brother... _


	4. Morning

_Well, one thing about Aya in the game that isn't perfect is that apparently she fights with Gin when she doesn't think he's appreciating nature enough, etc. _

_Also, someone was awesome enough to look the future chapters over for me beta-wise, so they should be much clearer than my recent stuff usually is. _

* * *

Naoya was the first to wake.

Gin and Aya were both night owls who did most of their work in the afternoon and evening, while Cain was a farmer. Even though that was lost to him long, long ago, he still loved the clarity of dawn. If anything, he liked the early morning hours even more now that he lived in a city, a place where most people weren't farmers and didn't appreciate that time. Oh, Tokyo was clogged with commuters at every degree of 'o-dark-hundred,' but he loved to go for morning walks along Aoyama's tree-lined streets, surrounded by the presence of humanity. People going about their lives, prosperous and oblivious to the danger that surrounded them. It made him nostalgic, reminded him of his brother's city, even though in Tokyo he was just another face in the crowd.

The first time in this life a fellow craftsman had recognized him in the street, run up to him and asked for a bit of his time and advice Cain felt like he'd been swept back in time and ended up giving the programmer known as 10Bit so much help that he was deluged with requests the next week and had to be very sharp with Atsuro and make quite a few grown PhDs cry with caustic e-mails to reduce the number of idiots bothering him.

The UEM field… Interesting. It couldn't be compared to God's Thunder, of course, but it would be at least a somewhat effective means of wiping a large-scale demonic incursion off the map. It was looking more and more like instead of trying to find somewhere deserted for the war to be fought without useless governments getting in the way or idiots getting involved, the best option would be to hold it in the middle of so many people that the mass of insects would itself prevent interference: they would hesitate to swat at the Shomonkai for fear of what else they would disturb. Or destroy, like their entire economy.

When he'd spent so much time protecting cities, centers of the struggling civilization the angels tried to crush, it was counterintuitive, yet somehow elegant. Let the battle for the human world take place somewhere flooded with humanity, and see how the angels could handle large numbers of demon tamers, honed by fighting each other and demons for survival!

The thought made him smile even though he was looking down at the two others who lay in this bed with him.

It wasn't as though Naoya wasn't used to sharing a bed. For much of human history in many places entire extended families would share a single bed, huddled together for warmth, and there might not even be a word for privacy (the English word literally meant 'theft from the community'). Travelers would often sleep several to a bed with strangers at inns as well, and less prosperous ones would take up space on the floorboards. In times and places where Cain couldn't put down roots, not when he couldn't grow anything with roots, he'd spent entire lifetimes on the road as a traveling craftsman who could do just about anything that needed doing. So many lives: despite all the different cultures and places and people, the ways he'd found to fight to survive, they all blurred together after awhile.

There was a certain sameness to them, after all. His curse. Being so much _older _than everyone around him, except his brother when he was the King of Bel. And of course, the central realities of his existence were his brother and those damned angels.

He'd had apprentices, had people that regarded themselves as his friends that he'd mustered up some affection for, created everything from swords to street layouts. Then, after the Great Flood first swept everything away, he'd begun to realize that there was nothing that he could keep, aside from his brother and his enemies. He'd learned not to get attached to things, places or people, the same way mothers learned not to get attached to their babies after the invention of disease until they were old enough to speak and they were more likely to live than not.

He was used to relying on himself, his own strength, his own power. It was the only reliable tool he had, and there was so much he needed to do. Yet now there was something that he couldn't help but be attached to, because it was part of him.

Simply as a matter of logic, this Aya was a trap. Only an angel could have gotten at those bones in the first place, so this was obviously an attempt to sabotage the War of Bel. He'd have another chance at getting his brother's soul pieced back together in another thousand years, but not if humanity was stripped of its free will or exterminated after this ordeal.

The absolute best case scenario was that she would distract him and be a random factor that he couldn't afford. That his brother and humanity, his poor, crippled nieces and nephews couldn't afford. Not when he was the only one who remembered the threat, who could counter it, who had even a chance of outwitting God himself. After so long they were practically the same age, and humans had been created in God's image, with God's nature, at the beginning.

What he should do, what his _duty _was to his brother and all of the dead, to seven million stunted lives afflicted with so many curses?

His hand touched her throat, and he found himself momentarily stunned by how soft her skin was, untouched by the pox or signs of age that would already have started to show on a twenty-four-year-old's skin for most of history. He found himself noticing that she was warm, even though her lover's muscled body was radiating much more heat.

He heard her breathe, felt her pulse, thought of how she wasn't waking up, wasn't struggling. It wasn't as though he was gripping her throat, much less strangling her (yet). He'd just laid a hand on her, touched his fingertips to her windpipe.

Humans were so easy to kill, he knew that now. It wouldn't take very long to find their knives. He could kill her just like his brother killed those lambs, slice that throat and let the blood poor down. Would God find that pleasing as well, that Cain killed _himself, _sacrificed himself to his war against God? Or would it simply bore him? Cain had done it before, after all. When he'd failed to save Abel yet again and the only way to find Abel's reincarnation, to allow Abel's soul to find this world again was to die and be reborn so Abel's soul could follow him into the new life.

He'd sacrificed his own life dozens of times, dying not just by his own hand but in battle, in accidents, his body wrapped around his brother's as the flood whirled them around with the stones of broken buildings. Why was he hesitating now?

Because she was happy.

Something so ephemeral, so… He'd murdered his brother. Everything was so close to destruction. He didn't have a right to blissful ignorance. As for a relationship with another human? When their lives were so brief a span compared to his? He was surrounded by children who would be struck down before they could grow up. Watching his parents, he'd learned that love was something to be shared with an equal, and he didn't _have _equals. He was older than all but the oldest angels and demons, and they weren't human, didn't have free will, were all beings that existed for some purpose or another and…

Even if she had his soul, she didn't have his knowledge. She was himself as a new soul, not an innocent because what human was, but…

He couldn't afford to indulge himself, to let himself drink from her happiness, view this as some kind of second chance to be happy. He'd have a third chance when his brother was whole, the empire was reestablished and the threat of God was dealt with so it wouldn't just all be destroyed a third time.

So, kill her and kill this Gin because he was the type to seek revenge, then steal time from supercomputers and dip into all the funds he had hidden away to hire detectives to track down his brother's other half, and, well, he couldn't kill her. Wouldn't stain his hands with his brother's blood a second time. But he could turn her to stone or something, give her to his brother as a gift after he became King of Bel. Let himself watch _them _be happy, and feel that he'd managed to make something right.

That was the right thing, that was the necessary thing. Forget that he was the one who was led to her: she hadn't gone searching for him her entire life the way God and Remiel would surely have wanted. Despite being a piece of him, she'd built her own life, found her own happiness and her own partner, just like Aunt Lilith. She didn't even know what God really was and she'd rebelled against him by utterly ignoring her destiny.

Such an innocent, innocent enough to feel the pull between them, experience the heartbreaking joy tasting her joy gave him and not realize that there had to be a catch. Innocent enough to simply accept that good things could happen, even to people who obviously simply weren't meant to be happy.

Maybe he should turn her to stone, he thought, stroking that throat and watching Gin grumble a bit, twisting a bit now that the warm weight of Naoya's chest against his other side was gone and Naoya hadn't put the blanket back down. His arm was tightening around Aya, and Naoya knew an annoyed 'don't steal the blankets' mumble when he heard one, after all these ages.

Purely so that he didn't wake up, Naoya pulled the blanket around him to cover up Gin's chest again, and found himself smiling when there was a sound that had to be a thanks, and a smile, and…

And he wanted this. Wanted to pretend someone who had been alive for less than a quarter of a century was capable of understanding him, even if she could taste his soul. Their soul.

Maybe he should turn them both to stone, have something beautiful to look at until someone smashed it, like everything else he tried to protect was smashed.

He _wanted _this. This was a part of him, his soul knew. With him was where it was obviously supposed to be. It felt as though he would be depriving himself of something he was supposed to have instead of freeing himself of an entanglement, from something he hadn't had for thousands of years and yet he'd, well, he'd survived. Sort of.

God intended for Eve to be Adam's companion, for him to obey her, and why wouldn't Adam stay in one place? Why wouldn't Adam go along with his own best judgment? He'd harnessed Adam's own free will and the human virtue of integrity, of being true to themselves, and used it to create a companion who would do what Lilith hadn't, and value Adam above all else because he was herself.

Naoya, Cain: he lived for his brother. It would be, it would be nice to have someone that would live for him and him alone. Even though he didn't want to see part of himself made into a slave, even his own slave. Didn't want her to be stripped of her happiness, her own decisions overruled by God's plan. It would be easy for Cain to make her forget about Gin, he was certain: he was the person he knew best, after all. He knew what drove him. He could have an adoring companion, and it was such a _temptation_.

To make another human into what God wanted all of humanity to be: if he did that, it would go against all the principles he'd somehow managed to cling to. By betraying her, he'd betray himself. If he broke her, he'd break _himself_, and eventually the angels would win and he'd kneel before God.

By sacrificing her, he would sacrifice himself, and his own happiness.

Somehow, it was harder to do that when 'he' was in another body, had another personality. Hadn't done anything to deserve this. Couldn't he let just this part of him be selfish? Be free, have the free will that he'd spent so long fighting for humanity to have?

Without him even being aware of it, his hand had moved to her hair, started combing through it, petting it, scratching gently at her scalp the way he'd touched his little brother in so many bodies.

Making that same implicit promise: there's no need to fear my touch, I won't hurt you. I will guide and protect you: it is safe to rest when I am here, it is safe to close your eyes and just breathe, just enjoy the world that was created for us.

How long had it been since he'd been held? His stepparents in this life were the most tactile parents he'd had in centuries, even though Japan's culture was a reserved one when it came to signs of affection. No matter how much practice he had at blending in, people he was around every day would sense that he wasn't letting himself connect to them in the way a normal child would, that he didn't want them to put their hands on him when he wasn't theirs to claim, didn't want them to promise to protect him, to shelter him in strong arms when that wasn't a promise they could keep. He couldn't ask them to protect him from God's own curse, after all. It wouldn't be fair to them. He was the elder, after all. He had a responsibility.

He wanted to, to give this other half of him what it simply wasn't possible for him to have. He wanted to indulge her in the ways he wouldn't indulge himself. He wanted it to be true that she would stay by his side always, as Eve had Adam, so that he would have someone else besides his little brother. Even if she couldn't help him. She just didn't know enough, wasn't old enough… but she could understand him, when she could feel what he felt. And he wanted that.

Temptation, temptation incarnate, just like Lilith herself. Even if this one was made by God in such a way that she would want to be with him, would fight to be with them, and someone fighting for that? Someone fighting to make him happy, besides his brother, the brother he already owed so much that he couldn't repay?

He _wanted, _and it made him feel so weak. He wanted, and he knew that God and the universe didn't care about what he wanted, except to use it against him, but he still did.

Was there some way to make her soul merge with his again? He knew it wouldn't be easy to undo what God had wrought.

No, he admitted, shaking his head. Even if it was possible, it would take a great deal of work and research, and he didn't have the time in this lifetime, not with the War of Bel less than a year away. Probably more like six months at the absolute latest, and it would actually be to his advantage to set it off sooner than that, at a time and in a manner of his choosing. Kuzuryu was a noble soul, knew so much more of the truth than anyone but Cain, had pieced it together out of multiple sources, driven by concern for humanity's sake. He would be easy to use, he would want to be used, for the sake of this world.

Even if he managed to scrape through the ordeal, even if he won humanity another chance, this was still the best chance he had to awaken his brother and end this. He was certain of it.

He needed to be able to focus, to not be distracted: that was the most important thing. How to accomplish that?

His parents hadn't ever reacted to each other the way he had reacted to Aya last night. Well, he wasn't sure what had gone on before he was born. What about when they first met? Could familiarity blunt this need? Make his, their, soul feel as though it was whole, all in one place and piece, settled? Would this become an addiction, something that would consume him with need more and more the more he fed it, or would it ease into something comfortable, a pleasant luxury like heated water or the sound of wind in the trees as he worked?

He could spare… Half a month to find out. No more.

She felt not just like him but like _family_. Humans had married with demons ranging from gods to angels to nekomata for so many generations that the only purely human soul he'd sensed in millennia was his brother's.

Could he really kill her?

Could he afford not to?

While he waited for them to wake, he reached out far enough to grab a corner of his haori and drag it over to the futon so he could get at his cell phone and send a text to his usual agency requesting a background check on the owner of the bar Eiji, known as 'Gin,' his… apparently live-in girlfriend, known as 'Aya' and the other members of the band D-Va, as well as Gin's staff. Bonus for results in under a week, preliminary results in a day on the first two.

He loved the information age: the closer and closer the Ordeal came, the more invaluable information would become.

* * *

Coffee.

Gin had brought two top-of-the-line coffee/espresso/whathaveyou machines, one for the bar and one for his apartment because while it wasn't as though he'd put up with being weak-willed about anything, sometimes he just didn't want to have to put clothes on before getting his first cup of strong black coffee of the day. If Aya didn't put on clothes before beginning to fill the sink with mugs that used to contain mocha, that was an even better way to begin the day.

When he smelled coffee, he mumbled, "Aya?" hopefully, but it subsided when he felt her soft, warm weight shift a little. She must have already finished her first cup and come back to bed.

When the side of a mug nudged his nose, he managed to get an arm free of the sheets to take it, drinking it like a shot and feeling it burn his throat on the way down. There wasn't any sugar in it, which combined with the fact that Aya was still breathing slowly, sound asleep, told him that they must have had someone over last night.

"Thanks," he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes a little, putting the mug down on the tea tray by the head of the bed that had never actually held any tea… Except he knew tea when he smelled it, and when the mug clinked against a smaller cup that was quickly removed before Gin accidently knocked it over.

"I should thank you for last night. You kept us from doing something all of us would have regretted," a calm voice with a tone that made it clear the speaker considered himself superior even though he owed Gin a favor replied.

Gin looked up to see the guy from last night. Instead of turning on the lights, he'd opened the blinds and the trees outside gave the room a slightly greenish and very morning tint that immediately made Gin want another cup of coffee. "So, you're in your right mind now?" Gin asked. Those red eyes seemed sharp (and dangerous) enough.

The man smirked, and it was a sharper, more taunting version of Aya's, 'You just asked a very stupid question, but I'm going to resist the temptation to give you a stupid answer because really, that would just be too easy' look.

"Let's say your normal mind, then," Gin amended himself, smiling because it was better to be laughing with than laughed at. He could have let himself be provoked or demand answers, but the guy was acting way too in-control and confident for someone waking up somewhere they'd never been before after being drugged, or whatever exactly had happened, not to have a reason to be calm.

Possibly Gin shouldn't have drunk anything the guy gave him. He was certain the guy was the victim last night, or at least a victim, but people generally didn't like to lose face. As long as Gin kept it friendly, they were all a lot safer.

"Not quite," Cain told him. "I'm left with no alternative but to hope that you were right last night, and more exposure will calm this hunger instead of making it worse. And, before you ask, I do remember what I told you last night and yes, it was the truth." Pity, that smile said. If he'd been in thinking last night he could have told Gin and Aya some lie with a better than zero percent chance of being believed. "It's possible that this is temporary, that we'll," Gin saw him look for the right way to put this, "calm down once we're sure a part of ourselves isn't going anywhere. I'm certain I know why I reacted so much more strongly than she did. The question is how long it will take. There's a war coming. The last time they invaded earth, I had my brother and a nation's resources to draw on. This time, the planet is completely unprepared. I can't afford to be distracted right now, but Aya was also right: if I force myself to stay away, that will also be a constant distraction."

Naoya drank from his teacup elegantly, and Gin noticed that he was sitting seiza, looked very old-fashioned and proper despite the untrimmed silver hair. The air of calm, control and civilization was almost enough to make someone ignore the red eyes. "So. It is rude of me to ask you to invite me into your home, but physical proximity and being in the space that is marked as hers should help." Cain smiled now, the bitterness mostly directed at himself. "The sooner this is taken care of, hopefully the sooner I'll be out of your hair."

"You want to move in?"

"You didn't seem bothered by having me in your bed last night. I keep irregular hours when I'm working on projects like this, but I don't worry: I won't wake you up when I leave."

"So just that? And the, the breathing." Gin glanced at the coffee machine: it said something about the two of them that they kept it in the bedroom.

"…Humanity back then was very different from humanity now. We didn't age once we were mature. There was no such thing as disease, and the soul and the flesh were not two. I'm fairly certain that the division between body and soul originally showed up in nephilim and other half-demons, since demons are beings of spirit even if they can physically manifest… I'll spare you the technicalities, but there are several mystic traditions where breath is how the soul and divine power enter and leave the body because it used to be literally true, and not just in special cases the way it is now."

Gin tilted his head to the side. "But you were able to yank me out of my body."

"Yes. There hasn't been a purely human soul created in thousands of years. Right now there are probably only four on Earth, and before I found Aya I would have said two, myself and my brother." Cain took another drink of the tea. "Of course, since Aya is… a different self but still part of my soul, that's four people but only two souls. More coffee?"

"Sure, and pass the sugar." Ah, Gin got it. Cain was acting like the host in Gin's own home. He might not have caught that power play if being a bartender hadn't given him a lot of experience with all the ways people reacted to food and drink, bread and salt. "How'd you figure out how I liked it brewed?" There were a couple tricks to how Gin liked his coffee.

"The wear on the buttons." Which were pressed how much, by fingers of what size.

"That's impressive. Say, do you…"

"I work as a freelance programmer. I make several million a year, and that's only what shows up on my tax returns." So no, he didn't need a job as a barista. "I won't offer you money: that would be an insult, and if you took it, well." This time, when Cain smiled his lips actually parted, but while the smile was genuine, so was the threat.

"Taking money to let you sleep with Aya, even if we were only talking sleep-sleep? Yeah," Gin agreed, returning Cain's smile even though Gin's own 'I'm happy with you now, but you'd better make sure I stay that way' smile seemed more pleasant on the surface, less naked threat. "I'd kill me too."

"She seems to think highly of you: she was practically showing you off to me." Cain looked down at his cup. "If she wasn't a summoner, I would tell you to get out of this country, because war is coming. Unfortunately, an angel must have caused her birth in the first place, so they will know that she exists. There is nowhere the two of you can run where she would be safe, no ward I can create that will protect her. A war of demons is about to come to Earth, and the angels will use that as an excuse to conquer or exterminate us, if they can. They will seek to kill everyone who knows how to summon, just like last time, so that humanity will be unable to defend itself when the next ordeal comes. When she's also a part of me? I've stopped them before, or at least kept their victory from being complete. They won't allow me to gain more power, or an ally. That's why this has to be a trap: they wouldn't have let her be born unless they had some reason to believe she would handicap me instead of fighting by my side. If I win despite her, then she will have failed in that purpose even if she didn't help me, if she's already started reaching for the power that would let her fight them?" Cain shook his head. "They will not let her live. The curse gives me some protection, but she isn't marked, so I don't know if it extends to her."

"The curse?"

"If you had any unwanted houseplants, I could give you a demonstration of part of it. Or…" Naoya looked at the window. "Does that open?"

"Yeah." Aya had insisted, so she could feel the wind when the mood struck her.

Naoya stood and walked over to it. "Watch this," he said, lifting up his teacup, then paused. "No, I'll get water right from the tap."

"So I can see that you didn't do anything to it?" Gin asked, standing up and walking over to look out the window.

"Exactly," Cain agreed, walking silently over to the kitchen and returning with a glass full of water. "See the grass below? I'll make sure to avoid the trees." He grimaced, but tilted the glass and flung the water out in an arc.

Every blade of grass the water touched instantly withered, the blighted area spreading as the water soaked into the soil, into the roots of the grass. "Every plant I try to grow, or pick fruit from, or tend: they die. That's one part of the curse."

"So you watering the grass killed it?"

"No, they were killed because I watered them. Everything is." Cain's eyes were dark with sorrow, memories of pain and anger in those ruby depths. "And I wouldn't kill you if you whored her out. No, you would take a very, very long time to die."

Gin looked at him with shock and alarm. That didn't sound like righteous indignation. That sounded like experience talking.

"If you hadn't been there last night, my own other half would have… I would thank you for protecting my virtue if I was a blushing maiden or I had any in the first place. Your lover was throwing herself at another man and you still were concerned for me. That's rare."

Gin gave him a look that said, 'And you're flattering me… why?' He was greatful for the change of subject, but obviously Cain wanted something from him.

"I need to teach Aya enough about demon summoning to be able to defend herself. I'll let her be the one to convince you that the supernatural exists," Cain had been bored with that conversation before the Enlightenment was a century old. "But you do want the power to protect her, don't you?"

"You tossed out killing her as an option last night, and now you want to teach me?" To fight people who threatened her, including Cain himself if he stopped playing nice?

"War is coming. In wars, people die. If you don't want Aya to be one of them, then study hard. Still, I'll make you this bargain: if I can stay here for half a month, and do whatever is necessary that doesn't involve harming your lover, then she will not be harmed by me or mine." His demons, his allies. "And during that time, I will teach you both whatever you are willing to learn." He frowned. "But I can't spend too much time… Time grows short, and to spend so much here..." He started to pace. "I hate explanations, but under the circumstances lying would be foolish." As would holding back information the angels could later shock them with. "She needs to understand what she's been born into, what we're up against."

"Wait, hold on a minute. You want her to fight for you?"

Ha. "She will. She won't let me leave her out of this: I know that because she is me. Just younger. She'll think that she can make a difference to what happens, she won't let this world fall into their hands."

Gin had to admit he was right about that. Aya loved this world, this city, but, "Shared souls, saying that she is you…"

"Can't you see it?" Naoya asked him. "Or am I too twisted and bitter?" Like his smile.

"Aya doesn't exactly act like a traditional housewife," Gin drawled. "And if you don't know that, then you don't know anything about her." Which did kind of imply that Naoya was making that up, and if that was a lie what else was?

"Of course not. I just got you coffee because I wanted you awake enough to have this conversation before she woke up." Naoya smirked. "You've been surprisingly calm about all of this." The demonstrations of magic and the curse.

"You… aren't normal." That much was obvious. "I saw you and Aya doing… that. If she believes in summoning or whatever, then I'll take her word for it."

A grin now. "Ah. Her loyal knight."

"So whose are you?" Cain was too comfortable with the appearance of submission, with thinking about someone else's condition and needs instead of just expecting Gin to go along with what he wanted because he was powerful. Cain had too much pride to bow down to just anyone, but those were court manners.

"Perceptive." Maniacal delight now. "I should have had more trust in her good taste." Young or not, she was him, after all. "That was a rhetorical question, I trust?"

"Judging from the way you broke that bastard's nose and who you were worried about even when you were scared stiff, your brother, am I right?"

"Correct. But I'm not a knight," Cain said. "I am his advisor, his strategist. My brother has always fought his own battles."

"And you do the dirty work?"

"Why not? My hands were the first to be stained with a fellow human's blood."

No, Gin thought, the world wasn't really any less crazy the next morning, either.

Still, either this was one hell of a con or Aya was in a lot of trouble. Actually, either way she was in a hell of a lot of trouble, because why else set up something this elaborate?

"MmmGin!"

"Hey, Aya."

"Come to bed." Her eyes opened a crack as she rolled over and got herself wrapped up more in the sheets. "What time is it, and… You, get down here too."

"Let me set an alarm first," Cain told her, kneeling by the side of the bed. "And call me Naoya for now." Two hours: if he lost track of time the sound would wake him up. He wasn't sure of how long they'd breathed together for last night before he fell asleep: that wasn't like him. Time sense was important in the ages before clocks.

Gin went to get himself another cup of coffee before sitting on the edge of the futon. It lookedlike he'd been appointed chaperone. This time, Aya'd wrapped her arms around him, and then it looked like Naoya had done the same. Of course, Aya's legs were still free for her to nudge him with an ankle: she meant in bed _properly_. Naoya opened a red eye to tell him that, "You should be here for this. I don't want her to get wrapped up in me and forget you."

That wasn't good. "Can that happen?"

"It was supposed to happen to me," Naoya told him, before returning to tasting the air just above her lips.

"You can just kiss already," Gin told him as he stroked a hand down Aya's back.

"Is there a reason we're not?" Aya wondered almost dreamily. "Flesh as well as spirit…" It was her mouth that captured his, and shouldn't a guy who was supposedly thousands of years old be more comfortable with kissing, with having a beautiful woman roll over on top of him?

The way he'd talked about prostitution, though, of not wanting that to happen to _her_… Curses were supposed to be nasty, weren't they. Wasn't much of a curse if he had an easy time of it, now was it? Gin wasn't going to ask, because it was none of his business, but Naoya'd sounded surprised by the fact Gin had stopped Aya from doing stuff to him, told Aya to knock it off instead of blaming Naoya. There was something about him that was attractive, Gin guessed, that was like Aya, only without her enthusiasm for life. More like Haru, with the pain she had because of how her family'd treated her.

Damn. Naoya's upper back was tensed up: Gin knew that one, it happened when people braced themselves to receive a blow. So either Naoya was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, or it could be just stress.

Not being a fool, Gin knew that Naoya'd been out to lay the groundwork to seduce Gin (to his side) too this morning. It as Aya's idea, really, and it would make jealousy less of an issue. Right, "Hold on a second. How far are you willing to go here."

Both of them blinked. "Condoms."

"Sorry, but you need to get checked," Aya said to Naoya. He was going in for tests as soon as they got out of bed. She'd just met him last night, and she wasn't going to risk her and her lover catching anything. No way.

"I'm not having children," he said to her. "Absolutely not. I assume you're on the pill?"

"Of course, and I've got a five-year implant." Between Haru and the rest of the band, Aya was already raising several children, and she took her responsibilities seriously.

"I'll also need a DNA sample. After DNA was discovered, I froze a sample from my last body and then had it compared to this one: there was only enough difference to make me look Japanese instead of Austrian. I need to see how similar our genes are. According to my genome, I would have black hair if it weren't for the mark. They couldn't tell what my eye color would be, and I don't remember what it originally was because we didn't have mirrors. It's very possible that we're practically identical twins, aside from the obvious and tampering to produce a resemblance to your birth family."

"You're worried about inbreeding?" Aya asked him.

"Insanity runs in my family already." Of course he was worried! "Do you want to go to a hospital to have the samples drawn or have them come to us?"

Gin raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"

"I can have it done. I wouldn't have let a doctor run tests comparing my current DNA to a previous incarnation if I didn't have more than one hold over her." Of course, just giving her the fascinating samples was really what had won him the woman's loyalty. Naoya had already rolled out from under Aya and grabbed his cell phone. "Full check-up and tests on both of you: I'll have my lawyer find a trustworthy service…"

"You have a lawyer?"

Naoya nodded, already typing. "A firm of them, actually. English, I paid for the founder's training and the firm's creation around three hundred years ago? I had them open a Japanese branch when I incarnated over here. They specialize in patents and a few other things relevant to my interests." They'd also put him in contact with the Narumi Detective Agency, which had contacts with the Kuzunoha clan which let it investigate supernatural matters he didn't have the time to look at personally as well. "I used to do all of this personally, but there are just too many people in the world now." Too many things to keep track of. "The main bank I use is much older, of course. They don't know I'm the same person, but they don't ask questions. Do either of you have plans for today?"

"After last night?" Gin had figured he'd be spending most of today trying to clear that up.

Aya tapped Naoya on the shoulder, annoyed. "The cell phone stays off when we're in bed."

He turned to stare at her. "What?" Are you insane?

"It's too impersonal. People need to spend more time with each other face to face, and…"

"Oh, don't tell me you're a Luddite. I'll give you all the face to face time we need to get this out of our systems, but I need my phone, woman! I'm expecting background check reports, and what if they find something urgent in the medical tests, or one of the alarm programs I have monitoring what various intelligence agencies are monitoring goes off, or Atsuro gets double dog dared to crack something high profile again, or my brother nearly gets suspended for wearing his headphones when he's not allowed to? My Laplace artificial demon is clearly on the fritz: it should have realized that _something _momentous was going to happen, at least, so I need to keep a close eye on its reports and I'll probably have to alter my entire timetable…"

"_Timetable?" _

Very familiar with the opening stages of the kind of argument that happened when Aya's artistic sensibilities were offended by someone's lifestyle or lack of appreciation for nature, Gin headed to get more coffee.


	5. Noon

Hands on his back, digging in with knuckles and palms, and he could get used to this.

"You are too tense," she said, and he saw no reason to dignify that with a reply.

Preparing for war tended to do that, after all. Anyone who didn't fear war was a fool.

The candle she'd lit had the scent of green apples, and her perfume made him think of wildflowers and newly mown hay. It was a pity that every plant she'd ever tried to grow died: not immediately, so the curse must be weaker in her, but he didn't think she was incompetent enough to manage to destroy her class' garden plot singlehandedly out of carelessness, even in elementary school. Of course, there were her classmates to account for there, but he wasn't going to try to get her to grow things. Not when he was used to disappointment.

"Gin?" she asked finally.

"Yeah?" her lover replied, paging through her notes on summoning. He couldn't sing all that well, so this wasn't something he could imitate, but at least it looked like Aya really believed in this, to have notes on experimentation and how the emotions of the song affected what crossed over.

"My hands are tired, and I still haven't gotten some of the deep knots." She shook them out, fingers twitching through one of the exercises she used to keep her fingers limber for the keyboard. Her hands weren't getting stiff yet, partially because she wasn't addicted to the computer or her cell phone, but she'd like to hold that off as long as possible.

"You want to watch?"

"That too," she agreed. Naoya was making pretty little soft noises when it was just her. Would the bliss of relief from pain when Gin's hands got at one of the worst knots make him moan? "Come on, let me watch and we'll make out on your lap next."

That got him to sit down on the bed, as she knew it would. "Wow, he's this bad after you've been working on him this long?"

"Well, I do you regularly." And not just massages. "I don't let you get this bad." She nudged Naoya in the side as Gin went to work, applying enough pressure to rock Naoya's body from side-to side until he stabilized himself. "If you have so much money, why don't you hire someone? And sitting in front of the computer all the time isn't good for you, or your back."

"Let someone at my back?"

"You're letting Gin."

"Because he's yours." It was calming, and now he did moan.

Aya frowned. "People don't own people."

"Really? Tell that to the Romans. Or all the slave traders still doing a brisk business in this day and age. Then there's the angels, who consider being freed a fate so much worse than death that it's the origin of the concept of eternal damnation." Naoya laughed. "You're such a product of this society's delusions, even though you rebel against it. I think I like that. I never really looked beyond my plants and our little family until it was too late." Anyway, "That wasn't what I meant. I meant that he's _yours_. You can own people, you can force them to submit, you can take away the knowledge that they ever could have been free, but love and loyalty are something else."

Pillowing his head on his folded arms to look at her, Naoya reflected that, "You're very lucky you were born now. I had enough unwanted attention because of what I am, but at least my sex and my mark made most of them leave my brother and I alone. You're female, and I always had enough trouble with local lordlings as it was."

"What do you mean?" Aya asked, but Gin knew she knew what he meant. You couldn't be a fringe artist or run a bar without knowing how the criminal element worked.

It was worse, actually. "I mean kidnapping brides and concubines used to be very common, and it's still going on in parts of the world. Do you know how many times my parents or my brother's auctioned one of us off to the highest bidder or handed us off to the lord who owned the land they farmed without a fight? A beauty like you, with our charm," Cain said charm as though it had a capital letter, "born into a peasant family? If they sold you, they would have been comfortable for the rest of their lives. If they didn't sell you, someone would have gone through them to get at you."

Cain was as calm as if he was discussing the weather instead of institutionalized kidnapping, slavery and rape. "Why do you think women in the Middle East and Central Asia wear such concealing clothes? After civilization collapsed there, bandit tribes roamed the sands and steppes. A beautiful woman who walked around alone with her face uncovered was too dumb to live, because all a smitten bandit had to do was grab her and ride off into the sunset, and her family would have had little to no chance of rescuing her. Same thing in seaports. I spent eight years trying to track down my brother once, and it turned out he'd knifed his kidnapper as soon as he got aboard the ship, decided to stay there since he had better job prospects as a cabin boy and worked his way up to king of the pirates."

Naoya scowled at the memory. "I suppose I can't blame him for not writing home, since I hadn't gotten around to teaching him how to write." Cain hadn't made _that _mistake again. "Pure humans aren't rare because they were murdered, they're rare because my youngest brother and his children were swarmed by adoring angels and fallen angels who missed the divine essence they were programmed to adore, and then their children inherited that programming. The good news is," he told Gin, "most demons and angels aren't old enough to remember what the attraction to a pure human feels like, so they won't know what she is from the auto effect. The bad news is that without human blood, without free will, think about how attractive Aya is to humans and multiply that by at least ten, more for the powerful ones, and what demons want, they try to take."

"…And you already have a little brother to look after." Gin doubted that demons would care about human taboos when it came to what they wanted.

"He'll mostly look after himself, provided I craft him a good enough weapon. My name came to mean 'smith' for a reason."

Aya folded her arms. "So he can look after himself, and I can't?"

"No: he can look after himself _in this life _because I'm going to give him a tool to summon demons, force him to learn to use it, and I've already spent years selecting and grooming companions and bodyguards for him. You, on the other hand, are an amateur summoner and if you don't take this seriously enough you're not going to survive. So yes, I am trying to scare you. There have been two ordeals before, and both times even though humanity _won _civilization collapsed into barbarianism afterwards. Both times, the world went from peace and security where women and attractive young men," like Cain _and his younger brother, _"could walk around in clothing that shows off their bodies the way you do now to a world of chaos where they had to hide themselves for fear of the powerful. If you like the world you live in, if you like a world where you can walk around outside mostly unmolested, then you're going to fight, and you're going to survive to make sure this world stays the way you want it to be." Because otherwise, she wasn't the only one who would suffer.

"The only 'law' is that the powerful rule the weak: the only thing that changes is how much the weak complain about it. How much freedom the weak are allowed. The angels will give us none, because they were created unable to even grasp freedom. The demons don't understand the concept of giving the weak rights or respect either. Humanity can only be free if it is ruled by a human. If the angels win or the Bel demons win, we will all be made slaves, even though the angels talk about protecting the weak and the demons talk about the freedom of absolute chaos. If you want to stay _human_, if you want to stay a _person _whose will and feelings matter instead of being reduced to chattel, you will fight." Because there was no alternative. "_Don't _let him protect you," Cain said, waving up at Gin. "Because this is war and what if he can't even protect himself? You'll have to rely on your own power, your own strength. You can't even count on me, because I really don't care about protecting myself. I'll have another life, another chance: you most likely don't have that luxury..." Oh,_ yes_. There.

Aya was right, he really shouldn't have let his back get this knotted up. It inhibited the range of motion of his arms, for one thing, and they had massage chairs and all sorts of useful inventions these days. It wasn't like before, when the only things that gave massages were healers (and Cain had been a healer enough times to know how easily they could kill) and slaves/concubines (and he knew how much they could hate their masters).

Maybe the idea of getting used to this wasn't grasping at straws after all.

He should call for a courier to pick up his apartment key, go back to his place and pack for him. He needed his laptop: the deadline for that project wasn't anytime soon but the sooner it was completed, the sooner he'd have a backdoor into Japan's power system that wasn't hidden in a program the government could find out he'd written just by checking tax returns. No, this was just a little favor to a 'friend' who would put his own name on the finished project because he needed the money and he knew what was good for him.

No, not a courier: he'd have to call the Narumi Detective Agency. He didn't like the idea of a Kuzunoha in his space, but Naoya had long practice at keeping everything significant hidden and encrypted. Even if he carried off everything Naoya owned, it would do Yatagarasu no good at all. Still, it was a pity that even with his house key it would take either his brother or someone with enough training to be able to signal that they were entering his apartment with the permission of the master of the house to get past his wards when he wasn't home. He really should take those down: once the war started the government would be investigating him, and finding that his apartment was guarded with a force field might make them think he was a demon, since most of them didn't have any idea, even in this country, that humans had been using magic since the beginning.

Using a Kuzunoha as an errand boy was amusing: normally they were Yatagarasu's errand boys. A pity there was no way the protector of the capital would survive the coming events: Naoya might even have to kill him himself to bring down the city's wards, although he'd prefer not. Gouto cared about those boys, and Naoya had some sympathy for those who had their own curses. Not that he would let pity stay his hand, not in wartime.

A trumpet rang out, and Aya picked up Naoya's phone after seeing that he was holding to their agreement and hadn't moved to reach for his cell phone while he was in bed. "Your phone says it's a decrypted text: 'Only one set of chromosomes, shouldn't have been viable for a few other reasons. DNA not viable when inserted into another cell: indicates unique epigenetics at work. Same hair and eye pigments. Stem cells also present in the sample, advanced healing and disease response capabilities?'" The questioning note was Aya's, not the text's. "'Can start a cell line with this sample, and they mutate rapidly as well as change cell type. Allows accelerated evolution and bypasses dangers of inbreeding? Surprisingly, no cancer cells or mutations that inhibit cell function: epigenetic policing mechanism in action would also stop DNA poison damage."

"What?" Naoya almost sat up at that. "Repeat that last part."

"Would also stop DNA poison damage," Aya repeated.

"They… Seriously? They just used the bone, they didn't even… It's not just your soul that's original human, it's your body! Whoever incarnated you didn't put the other curses on you!"

"Other curses?" she asked.

"Aging. Vulnerability to disease. Aging is caused by damage to the DNA that gets worse over time, keeping the body from working properly. If she's right, you won't get old, and your immune system will respond too fast for any bacteria or virus to even get a foothold. You've never been sick in your life, have you? I'm sure you attribute that to your lifestyle." Even though obviously being up at night wasn't healthy to begin with, even if she was a vegetarian and didn't use drugs other than alcohol in moderation. "The lifespans at the beginning of the bible are measured in centuries because we used to live that long. We could die of starvation, injury and stupid accidents, but even without the fruit of the Tree of Life to make us eternal, we just weren't designed to die. We were immortal in the same way angels and demons were until God decided to make an exception for us, to keep us from accumulating enough knowledge and power to become his equals."

Aya realized something. "If I remember biology right, cells with only one set of chromosomes are…"

"Yes. It makes sense: you, Eve and the other one were created for a breeding program." Even though he'd cursed God for giving part of him that fate last night, his eyes were excited now. "If your children inherit…" Oh _damn._ "I need my cell."

"We just talked about this." And Aya wasn't going to back down, not this early in their relationship. She could tell when people were used to overriding other people's objections and opinions with a steamroller: she was like that herself. If she let him think he could do that to her, having him around would get very annoying very fast, no matter how good the sex would be.

Now Cain rolled over and pushed Gin's arms aside to sit up and almost glared at Aya to communicate how urgent this was. "I need to call her right now before she stops rejoicing over the potential and convince her not to go public with this, or at least to wait! I trusted her with the samples because she's the type who cares about honor and giving her word, but she's also a doctor! She sees it as her duty to sacrifice her time, potential and even life to save lives, and we just handed her a key that could be used to unlock human immortality! Do you think she won't sacrifice her honor or even her soul for this? I need to convince her to wait, and you need to think about whether or not you want test-tube offspring. If you don't, I'll have to kill her tonight." And sweep her home, lab and university's systems to destroy all her samples and research himself, setting time bombs on the way out. It was the only way to be sure. "I might kill her even if you don't mind: if she combines my chromosomes or my brother's with yours, the child definitely would be immortal." And then there would be proof it could work, and not only would the human world go insane but once the angels moved to take that hope away? Cain would no longer be the only one who knew how cruel and deadly an enemy God was to mankind.

That would be useful, but the thought of allowing a child of his own blood, allowing a new soul that he would be responsible for, a new member of his family to be born into this God-damned world?

If he was seriously considering this, then he really had become no better than God himself.

Good.

"_No killing people,"_ Aya insisted, but tossed him the phone.

"Damn," Cain cursed as he dialed, already standing up. "Then I'm going to have to tell her the truth. Well, maybe I'll say aliens instead of angels. If the government finds out about this now, the angels will find out when the ordeal starts, and the project will never get off the ground. And if we lose the ordeal, we'll lose the technology for it anyway, unless you survive and someone knows who you are and tries-" the person on the other end picked up. "Yes, this is Smith. This is not something to talk about over the phone, even encrypted," he insisted, clearly cutting off excited medical babble. "I'm heading over there _right now_. You've noticed that the majority of the base DNA in the new sample you just received is identical to chromosomes in the other two samples?" Of course she had. "I _know_," he said, cutting her off again. "The capability _used to be _there in the first two samples I gave you. There is a _reason_ it isn't anymore. Yes," he said, interrupting another interruption. "Information on why those samples are the way they are is on a need-to-know basis and now you need to know. As of when you saw the potential, your life has been in danger. It's no longer safe for you to work at that university: how would you like your own lab with unlimited funding? And no, this isn't a cover-up. You will be allowed to go public so research will move faster _once it's safe." _

Cain looked furious enough to kill her right then when she didn't shut up. "I thought you understood communications security and classification! This is not about keeping control of this new potential, this is about keeping it from being taken away from us! Again! Get out of that building right now before someone wonders what's made you so excited: I'll meet you at your home. Congratulations, Dr. Otome. You've rediscovered human immortality on the verge of a war with an enemy that will exterminate us if they can claim we're enough of a threat, and undoing what they did to our genetics to keep us from advancing our technology too rapidly for their taste is the perfect excuse. Pick your daughter up from school and go home: I need to get off the phone to arrange transportation for me and bodyguards for the two of you."

Naoya hit the end call button and was immediately using the touchscreen to pull up recently made calls. "Minegeshi again. I need transportation to Osaka as quickly as possible. You know the start address: I'll give the final destination's address to the helicopter pilot en route so you can arrange a car." After he figured out where the nearest landing pad to Dr. Otome's home was. He'd like to avoid using the hospital's if he could. After ending that call, he told Gin and Aya, "I'm texting you Dr. Otome's number for future reference. Getting to know you as a person," Aya, "will hopefully make her even more willing to wait. How do you feel about having your background scrubbed?"

Aya was skeptical. "Would that even work? I'm a performer." In the age of the internet, when there were archives of old sites in search engines? That was how the person who redid their website after the problem with their old host had found all of the original coding. People on the internet were only as anonymous as they were insignificant: anyone who gave enough of a damn to find out how could dig up anything they wanted, and Aya had otaku.

"Knowledge is power: I've spent all of this lifetime and a lot of the last one focusing on computer science for the sake of the upcoming War, even before I realized that the angels would inflict as harsh an ordeal as possible on us because of it." There: the text was sent. "I was thinking of computerized ritual and prediction calculations at the beginning: the internet only became a concept while I was making arrangements to prepare for my next life, suffering the wasted years of infancy and undoing the damage caused by the half-decade I missed. The _potential _there…" All the power of human will and emotions, a planet full of hordes of them coming together, knowledge spread and stored until it was almost impossible to destroy? The angels _had _to destroy it.

Not if he could help it.

Gin and Aya watched him pace back and forth, almost as though he was prowling, as though this was part of a hunt. He was already sending another text. "You have my number: if you want me to return your call as soon as I'm free instead of listening to a message first, the recording will tell you to press seven. Let the Kuzonoha in when he gets here: I'll be back as soon as possible since I don't think anything more urgent than this is likely to come up, although right now my Laplace daemon is still having fits." While he'd known that the angels would do something drastic as soon as they realized what was on the horizon (their intel on the demon world was absolutely pitiful, and humans were insignificant) Aya being allowed to incarnate, much less _intact _and uncursed was outside the error bounds of possibility. There was a very significant factor he had either failed to notice or misread. Something had changed.

"I want to meet this Dr. Otome," Aya told him. What she didn't say was that she wanted to be there to make sure he didn't kill her.

"I'll make sure they send a helicopter with more than two seats, then." Another text.

"And you call yourself Smith?" Aya objected to something that cliché on principle.

"I call myself Smith because it's what my real name means. It's important that friends trust each other, after all." By using such an obviously fake name, he did them the courtesy of letting them know that he was using a fake name, so they knew it was just a label and weren't shocked to find out it was a lie and he was actually someone entirely different, someone they didn't know and couldn't trust at all. Finding out that he hadn't given them a fake name at all, but something as close to his real name as was safe? It had been fairly effective over the centuries, especially when geniuses were fewer and farther between and using the same name and persona with them made it easier for them to compare notes, if he needed them to. "I've been using one language or another's word for smith as a pseudonym for long enough that sometimes I wonder if I'm responsible for the cliché." He could probably figure it out from the internet, if he cared enough to waste the time.

He would like to get back into that bed, but perhaps tagging along with him would give Gin and Aya some idea of how much he was dealing with, how serious this truly was. Meeting Dr. Otome and seeing that her genes really were just that strange would convince Aya the rest of the way and scare Gin.

The peaceful days they had known for all their lives were about to die.

They would have to fight to overcome their fates, fight to survive.


	6. Betwixt & Between

_I do try to avoid making Naoya a Draco in Leather Pants, because what's the point of writing a character who's a Magnificent Bastard in the first place if he's not a bastard? The trouble is that all of the Eighth Day Routes reveal more about his character, and confirm some of the more positive interpretations – Even in Amane's, for example, he will make sure his brother survives no matter what if he's alive to do so. _

_A lot of people have noticed that despite Atsuro saying he's pushing them into Abel becoming the King of Bel, Naoya really does let the MC chose what he wants and honors that choice: the game on Atsuro's route is because Atsuro wants something from Naoya, and the fight on Amane's is a personal matter, not part of a plot – he's genuinely hurt and angry. Amane's Eighth is practically all about his woobie status and how he got screwed over by God, and as I mentioned in another fic's notes, he really does act a little too reserved/mature over what happened in Yuzu's (at least until he's offscreen). _

_The Overlord routes, both of them, confirm that he really is absolutely loyal to his brother, and not just in an 'you're my family so I will look after you no matter how you annoy me,' way as in Amane's Eighth, but in the way someone would be absolutely loyal to a king, or an overlord. To me, it confirms that back in the day, Bel/Abel really was the 'Master' the word Bel means, and Naoya sees himself as the strategist, not his brother's keeper or controller. He's an advisor: he makes plans and does stuff, but the decisions are not his to make, they're Abel's._

_This gets caught up to and passes the first chapter._

* * *

"Don't slam the door. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?" Gin wondered.

"We didn't have doors when my first mother was alive," Naoya said angrily as he sat down at the seat in front of his computer. Not angry at Gin, just angry.

"So, I take it you didn't see Aya today either?" Either that or he'd had to resist the urge to be anything but professional with her.

"No, but I did see Remiel's new vessel, and she confirmed that Aya and the other one incarnating now were one of his plans. Of course, I already knew that." The longer Aya was gone, the more that superior smirk and that angry snarl became the dominant expressions on his face. "It starts tomorrow, so I'll be leaving early to make sure my brother and his friends get their comps. I don't like calling him to Tokyo now when I haven't found the other one, but it's almost time for it to begin." So he couldn't wait any longer. "I'll pick Aya up before I come home."

Gin looked up again from the dishes. "You're rescuing Aya tomorrow night?" Finally!

"Of course. She has to be gotten out of there before Belberith gives up on trying to use the server to call Babel to him now that he has it in the demon world. At that point, they'll try to use her power to merge the demon world with this one enough for Belberith to be the first to cross over, and that has the risk of pulling her into the demon realm. I'll strike once that begins."

"Got it all planned out, huh?"

"Someone has to." Naoya was already typing. Awhile later, he asked, "Why are you still looking at me?"

"You've got eyes in the back of your head? Or are you going to say that this is because you've studied people for so long?"

"Hmm," Naoya said, turning in the chair, and the twist to his lips was a little pleased, in a, 'Good insect, I see why the other me keeps you around' way. "Why not both?"

Gin walked over to him, and Naoya pulling him down by his collar for a kiss wasn't a surprise at all, because it was just what Aya would have done. Gin smiled: So much for Naoya being all superior because he could anticipate people's actions. Weird that it was already seeming kind of cute, but it didn't bother Gin all that much and it put Naoya in a good mood, which made him less nervous about his free will and everything and more likely to be sensible and go along with whatever Gin and Aya were trying to get him to do.

"You're obliging today," Naoya murmured. "More 'positive reinforcement?'"

"You don't want to celebrate Aya coming home soon?"

"Only if you're on top."

"Again?" It was still something of a surprise that Naoya hadn't demanded to be the one in the dominant position yet, but Gin knew just how many damns Naoya gave for most people's ideas about anything, let alone sex (zero), and, "You're just lazy." He liked getting to lie there and be sexy and make Gin rub his back and get to boss him around about how he was doing it wrong until Gin managed to shut him up. Gin was well aware that Naoya annoying him until he did it the way Naoya wanted was negative reinforcement or training, but afterwards was the only time he got to see Naoya undone and at his mercy, and he was pretty sure that was what Naoya wanted, too, to not have to be the one in control, to be able to trust someone else at his back, after all this time. To be looked after for once, so Gin supposed he'd put up with it.

"Who's the one working twenty-hour days?" Naoya was, his time split between the Shomonkai, his work on his brother's friends' and Gin's comps, his planning and other programming and the electronics work that was supposedly the reason he was at Gin's bar in the first place. Naoya's smile was both mocking and affectionate. "Be glad I'm not making you make me dinner."

"Good point," Gin conceded, or seemed to, making a note to make Naoya dinner at some point. After the lockdown, when Naoya would spare the time to appreciate it instead of shoveling it down so he could get to work or sleep. Aya would make him, and then they'd see, wouldn't they. If Naoya decided he had to one-up Gin by cooking next, all the better. He'd better be fantastic at it, after all those millennia he kept bragging about. Then Aya would make him cook more often.

"I'll be done here and in bed in fifteen minutes." And Gin had better be there before Naoya fell asleep, or Naoya would wake him up in the middle of the night when Naoya got up in order to head out early.

It was hard not to think of Naoya as somewhat feminine, when despite his crankyness and bitterness Gin kept reading him as 'like Aya' and Aya was definitely a woman. Naoya knew it too, and looking up at Gin through pale eyelashes made it obvious that he was preying on Gin's protective side, the one that made Yuzu call him everyone's big brother. But behind the obviously false submission were hints of real loneliness, real vulnerability, and Aya had been the one who changed Gin's life, who made him appreciate the world around him. It wasn't that he minded that she was an independent woman, much less resented how she'd turned his life around, but it was nice to get to pay that back a little.

* * *

"Well," Gin said after Naoya finished drawing the ward so the kids in the other room couldn't hear them. "Looks like your brother can keep his hands off Haru." Which was a good thing, because Haru was his little girl, and anyone who hurt her… Well.

Instead of dismissing it as because Abel didn't remember, didn't have ages of suffering alone with a little brother to look after and no one to look after _him_ in his head, Naoya frowned angrily at himself. "Remiel's vessel looked surprised when I said I couldn't resist my other half. If its plot worked better than expected because of my weakness…" If he _should _be able to resist Aya?

Naoya's reflexes let him grab the pillow Aya threw at his head even as he brooded. "Stop letting yourself play along with someone else's mind games and come to bed."

Naoya smiled in that 'you're right because you're me' way that was both fiendish and cute.

Damn, had Gin really managed to forget just how good they looked together?

"You realize," Aya said afterwards, when the afterglow was putting both Gin and Naoya to sleep, "That this means we need to set them up with someone."

"Hmm?" Naoya sounded exceedingly doubtful.

"Well, you're the one who wanted me, us, to keep having someone besides each other. Having someone normal in the mix should help keep your brother and Haru from getting all wrapped up in each other."

Naoya's silence meant he conceded her point, but Gin looked a little alarmed. "Hey, wait a minute, this is Haru. Can't that wait?" He was already worried about his little girl having one serious commitment. One night stands were one thing, but letting someone in meant they could hurt her, and Haru was still pretty fragile.

"Yes, it can wait, but we should start keeping an eye out for candidates."

Naoya made another noise of agreement.

"And it's not like there won't be two overprotective big brothers keeping an eye on things." Gin for Haru's sake and Naoya for Kazuya's.

* * *

"You know your apprentice has a crush on you, right?" Gin said as he checked out and mostly just folded up the winter clothes the kids had slept on – they'd put sheets between them and their bodies, and bathed before they went to bed, so he could mostly put them away for now and wash them when they didn't have to worry about running out of running water.

Naoya was still in bed, since Aya had twisted his arm and forced him to give her a list of the things he'd planned to investigate or keep an eye on today that didn't require much of a trained eye, just an intelligent one with demons to call on in order to get into various places, so he could get caught up on his sleep. He still was only half-asleep, keeping an ear open for the beep of the comp. Aya and Gin were the only ones besides him that could send e-mail during the day.

"Yes," Naoya said, and yawned. "Always happens. Like when Hephaestus met Athena."

Gin decided not to ask about the mythological reference: how many gods were there? "Hard to blame them. You're hot for a teacher." And Haru had the same kind of thing for Aya, so maybe it was a them-thing. Gin was perfectly happy to admit that Aya was just that sexy.

"It's the knowledge. I only teach geniuses, and they've never met anyone as smart as they are before. Someone capable of understanding them." Although Atsuro was brilliant even by the standards Naoya had for his apprentices: the greater number of people within a reasonable travel time these days meant Naoya had a far greater pool to pick from.

Understanding, huh, Gin mused. Way to let slip what Naoya considered important. Unlike Aya, he didn't take any pride in his looks: he was sexy and he knew it, but he considered it just part and parcel of being related to God, who was a vain and jealous god who demanded adoration.

Naoya's comp finally beeped and Gin looked up in alarm. "Don't worry," Naoya told him, finally getting out of bed. "It's just time for me to get ready to set up that warded area. I can't move equipment there now, since there's still a good chance of human trespassers, but I want it ready to go."

"I'll come with you."

"Don't be stupid," Naoya said, shrugging off his sleeping robe and getting dressed with economical movements. "You own a _bar_. Once law and order begin to break down, this place will be one of the masses' targets, especially the Yakuza. You've got food here, and _especially _drink. The SDF isn't going to be airlifting any of _that _in, and I'm sure you know better than I do how many of those straight-laced office workers are actually alcoholics who party desperately to escape the grind of their meaningless lives. If you don't want to come back to find that your door was broken down and there are still drunk and angry demon tamers camped out in your bar, throwing bottles onto your clean floors, you'll stay here and discourage them from trying anything."

Gin winced, forced to admit Naoya was right. "Once tamers start attacking, I might not be able to hide that I'm a tamer myself forever."

"That's why I need to prepare a backup location." Obviously. "Well, one reason." Naoya flipped his comp open and closed out of the normal menu to access some of the custom features he was working on. "I'll be back… When I'm back." There were a few things he had to check up on himself, like the ongoing decay of the situation in the lockdown, and who knew what might come up?

"So you were right about me needing to guard the fort." Damn. He'd already admitted Naoya was right, but he still really didn't like it.

"I could leave an altered comp with some attack demons, but that might also cause questions if anyone who breaks in gets out alive, now wouldn't it? If your bar is taken over by demons and then you're back, still living here safe and sound."

"Yeah, that would prove I'm a demon tamer."

"Or that you've been replaced. According to the SDF chatter, demons have already tried killing and impersonating some of the special force officers inside the lockdown. They know demons can look like humans – you remember Loki."

Gin nodded.

Naoya sighed, annoyed. "I'll need to start wearing contacts when I'm incognito unless I want to be mistaken for a demon or they realize I'm a sorcerer and attack." It wasn't as though he couldn't handle a mob, but it would attract attention.

"That's happened before?"

Naoya kept navigating a homebrew menu as he answered, "Oh yes. I've been taken for a witch, demon child, aberration or bad omen and killed or exposed on a hilltop before I've even gotten out of the cradle quite a few times. My birth family and anyone who encouraged them to do it are always struck down by God afterwards, but that doesn't make it any less annoying."

Gin winced with sympathy.

"That's what humans do when they've been reduced to barbarianism. Just like what has already begun to happen inside this lockdown. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go make us a safe place to hole up," Naoya said, and vanished with the press of another button.

* * *

"Oh, hey Izuna," Atsuro said when they ran across the SDF officer and new tamer again.

She ignored him, looking directly at the group's leader. "I have some questions for you. According to our database, after photos of you were sent out of the lockdown for identification, you're Kazuya Minegeshi, correct?"

Abel nodded.

Izuna frowned sternly. "So Abel is a pseudonym?"

"No, it's what everyone calls me." Although he had introduced himself to her by that name because Naoya and Aya said they needed to hide their connection to them.

"But you are the stepbrother of Naoya Minegeshi?"

"Well, he's my cousin, and we took him in after his parents died, so he's basically my big brother," Abel said, because lying definitely wouldn't help at this point.

"And is he the one who gave you those comps?"

Abel nodded, and it didn't slip past Izuna's notice that Yuzu and Atsuro were looking worried and letting Abel answer all the questions, which wasn't very normal for these teenagers.

Next question. "Were you aware that he is the Shomonkai's chief programmer, responsible for the creation of the demon summoning program?" Had they only been pretending to be innocent victims this whole time?

"Not until after the Lockdown started." Abel sighed. "He called us to Tokyo to come meet him, then he ditched us after giving the comps to Yuzu and saying we'd need them. I've seen him a couple times since then, but I haven't been able to make him give us any answers. So we've been trying to piece together what's going on and track him down, but he's avoiding us."

"So none of you had any idea what he was working on?"

Yuzu shook her head: she didn't know anything about computers.

"Nope," Atsuro said. "I hadn't heard from him for awhile. I actually wanted him to check over some of my coding, but he stood us up and then this happened."

"So you are his student?" Izuna knew he was: he'd bragged about it on his blog, although it seemed to be a big deal judging from how other programmers had reacted, and how the consultants they'd called in had reacted to finding out this was Naoya Minegeshi's program.

Summoning demons, with a computer or no computer? Ridiculous. Naoya was involved? Well, then it might be possible, but they weren't going to be much use figuring out how.

"Yeah!" Atsuro said excitedly, stars in his eyes, then realized that um, that might not be the best thing to brag about right now. "I don't know anything about demons, though."

"We were thinking that if we could find the server, it might be possible to send back all the ones that were summoned with comps, but that still leaves the demons that showed up on their own, and the ones Belial's worshippers summoned," Abel told her. "Although they've got comps now."

"Belial's worshippers? I thought the god of the Shomonkai was Belberith." Another cult?

"No," Atsuro said, shaking his head. "There's something going on called the war of Bel. We ran into a lot of demons that served Beldr, but we already beat him. Belial hasn't shown up yet."

"Then there's Remiel: he isn't a Bel, but he says there's another Bel that he's keeping imprisoned inside Amane," Abel mentioned, counting them on his fingers. "She's supposed to be a servant of Belberith. And the gigolo said something about another Bel called 'the right hand of darkness,' but we don't have any idea who that is."

Izuna's eyes widened. "The priestess of the Shomonkai has a demon inside her?"

"And an angel," Abel told her, because he didn't want Izuna going after Amane. "She said the second time I met her that that she was a vessel for holy and unholy voices."

"An angel? If she can summon a demon without a comp, but she's under an angel's protection…" Izuna would need to ask for instructions.

"There are a couple more angels inside the lockdown, but they're both totally selfish," Atsuro said, outraged again by the memory of talking to Sariel, hearing that bullshit.

Abel, Midori and Haru nodded in agreement, while Yuzu looked uncomfortable. Or was it regretful? It was Yuzu that reminded them that, "Remiel's nice, though. He said he was Naoya's guardian angel."

"Naoya's… Guardian?" Izuna had gotten the impression that there was no such thing, or at least they weren't important enough in the hierarchy to be worth mentioning.

"Well, we're not sure he was talking about Naoya," Abel reminded Yuzu.

"Come on, who else could it be? You said so yourself, right? Everyone can tell as soon as they meet him that Naoya's not normal!" Yuzu said, annoyed. "And you're the one that said that we should work with her to get out of the lockdown, so why shouldn't I tell her this? It shouldn't get him in more trouble than he's already in, and it might help!"

"Yuzu…" Atsuro said, looking worried for her as the strain she was under began to show, her arms not so much folded as wrapped around herself.

"Everyone inside the lockdown is fraying around the edges," Haru said, to comfort her.

"Naoya's not normal?" Izuna had figured out that much. White hair, red eyes, not an albino… "Is he a demon?" For how long had he been a demon? Had the original Naoya Minegeshi died years ago, and then the demon arranged an accident for his parents?

They all stared at her, shocked out of their worry. "Remiel said he was given to watch over the one who resurrects," Abel said finally. "Since he was talking about someone connected to me, we think that's Naoya. Remiel said that he was a human," well, those weren't the exact words, but Naoya wasn't a demon, "and that he'd witnessed the last ordeal and the sundering of the human language, the primal common tongue. It would make sense. I mean, a lot of people said that Naoya had a very old soul when he was a kid."

"And it would explain how he knows so much about everything, especially what people are going to do," Atsuro added, because he really was in awe of his teacher. "So if we're right, then Naoya worked with the Shomonkai to save humanity from the ordeal, but then he left them because he didn't think putting a demon god in charge was the only option."

"So he's not a supporter of Belberith?" And he really had left the Shomonkai? Good to know.

"No way!" Atsuro said, outraged. "He wouldn't want demons doing whatever they wanted to people, and Abel's his cousin! He wouldn't let demons kill him!"

Oh? "You specifically?" Izuna asked Abel, because everyone had reacted more to what Atsuro had just let slip than to Yuzu's words. Well, except Midori: it seemed to be news to her.

Kazuya looked down at his shoes. "I'm… Kind of in the War of Bel. I think that's why he summoned me and my friends inside the Lockdown and gave us comps: at first we thought it was because Naoya had to stay inside the Lockdown and he just wanted me in here to keep an eye on me, but Beldr said he sensed the power in me, and Remiel said I'm the human heart of the soul of Bel." As mystic as that sounded, Remiel was like that. "So all the Bel demons are coming after me as well as each other, because whoever gets all the rest of the pieces of Bel's soul can try to summon Babel and get its power. Well, that's what the gigolo said, but when Haru asked Gin about him, because he used to be a customer, Gin said that he was the kind of person who would put drugs in people's drinks to see what happened, and that we shouldn't believe a word he says, even if he was right about the mistletoe cell phone strap."

"You've really been gathering a lot of information, haven't you?" Izuna was impressed by their efforts.

"We want to end the lockdown too!" Atsuro reminded her. He was not used to being treated like he was just a kid, not when he was something of an authority online.

"Remiel wants me to win the War of Bel so that a demon can't get that power," Abel wasn't going to talk about the Messiah stuff, that was too much and would make him sound like a megalomaniac or something, "and he thinks that Naoya wants the same thing, since otherwise I'll have to worry about demons coming after me my whole life, but Naoya doesn't trust angels because he saw all those people die during the last Ordeal." If so, Abel definitely wasn't going to blame him.

"But we've got to beat Belial first, since he's the reason our death clock has a day less than yours. Then there's the UEM, the angels…" Atsuro looked downcast: there was so much they needed to do, and so little time left.

"Relax, Otakuro," Haru told him, patting the bag at her back that held her synthesizer. "We've got it covered so far, right?" When he opened his mouth to reply, she added, "And you're forgetting Jezebel, Belberith and that other guy."

"Man, Haru, you're as cruel as Yoohoo."

"Don't call me Yoohoo."

"Okay, Harutaku!"

…And sometimes, Izuna found it all too easy to believe these were ordinary teenagers.


	7. Chapter 7

This time it was Aya that slammed the door, stomping past the entryway without even taking off her high heels. Gin winced: these were nice wood floors. She went right past him and Naoya, who had gotten back earlier looking like everything had gone well, and into the bathroom.

Naoya glanced up from the computer that was hooked up to the emergency committee meeting the Diet was holding to discuss Fushimi's latest report, the equipment he was using to create custom comps still scattered around him. He was done making and handing out ones free of the Shomonkai's control programming for tamers now that comps had become so widespread, but he needed more 'haywire comps' with friend/foe recognition preset to use to summon demons in case he needed an army somewhere. All of them needed an identity code that he could use to put them into groups for mass activation as well as to activate them remotely. He looked worried. This wasn't like her, it was like him when he had been much, much younger and hadn't gotten used to frustration, in dealing with an enemy whose ability to predict the future came from its nature instead of either hard-won experience or computer programs that were only possible now.

She came back out of the bathroom carrying her towel, loofah, the good bubble bath and a bunch of other stuff they'd mostly gotten in gift baskets and just kept around in case they ran out of the regular stuff or needed something they could pack to take on the road and stomped back down the stairs, heading for the hot tub Naoya had rigged up.

Once the apartment door closed behind her, Gin said "It's her city. The sky's getting like this, demons everywhere, people are afraid and turning on each other, and then there's the contamination zone." Damn, he knew that it would get to her eventually. At least she was only taking a bath instead of attracting a lot of attention eradicating demons like that Midori girl who had almost gotten herself killed. He knew Aya, she wouldn't go the way Keisuke had gone, much less Kaido, who had decided to shed his brother's legacy of being a good guy and go after naked power for power's sake. The Shibuya Daemons, the neighborhood's protectors, were well on their way to becoming yet more demons.

Naoya sighed. "I remember my brother, and his city." How would he have felt even if he'd survived the angels' attack, with it lying smashed around him, with his people panicking in the streets, unable to understand each other? "I'll try to find some good news for her, when she returns."

Oh? Gin had been about to tell him to leave her alone for now, and try to find a way to cheer her up. Seeing his expression, Naoya told him, "That's what I would prefer," and dragged himself up out of bed to his computer setup. "At least she knows enough about how it works that she won't summon demons by accident no matter how angry she is..."

When Naoya suddenly stopped talking and ran down the stairs, Gin followed, throwing open the door to the temporary bathroom after it banged shut behind Naoya to find Aya with a towel wrapped around her staring at a woman with a snake wrapped around her.

"Aunt Lilith?"

"You know her?" Aya asked. She'd only recognized the name of the demon who spoke to her because of the rock music festival named after her.

"Yes, she's our aunt." Naoya was just surprised she would offer a contract to someone of the same breed of her replacement. Not that she'd ever envied Eve, just pitied her a bit for not having a choice about loving Adam. Yet Aya had chosen Gin, someone other than Naoya, just like Lilith. That was the correspondence between them that let Aya summon her.

Lilith here, one of the Bels had made a name for himself as Beelzebub, his and Abel's other halves… Who would appear next to complicate matters, Lucifer?

Well, what had he expected, when the war of Bel was a war, the opening campaign of a war against God himself? He should stop being surprised and start making contingency plans. This was a stroke of luck, but what if the four archangels showed up next?

"So… Take-Mikazuchi, Lilith, and…" Gin looked at Naoya. Who would he get, and was there a reason he was only using demons from the comps?

Oh, Naoya realized. "I know who I'm likely to call, and I have no intention of turning this into a world of chaos." Unless his brother wished it or it was the only alternative to humanity's destruction. Then, then he might summon Lucifer into this world.

After all, if his other half called Lilith, wouldn't he get the Serpent?

Speaking of Take-Mikazuchi… Naoya fingered the keycard Gin had returned. Odds were that Azuma hadn't even taken his access out of the system, not when they wanted to get their hands on him and that building would be a wonderful place for an ambush. But Gin's demon was a kishin, and they had Jikoku's sword in there. He'd planned to see if they were up to anything new tomorrow, but perhaps he should pay them a visit tonight, before anyone realized that sword was more than just a trophy of war.

* * *

"So you have come, Cain."

Naoya knew without turning around that this was not the girl. "Remiel. There's no need to float around on my account, I know who you are." Damn. The Shomonkai might not have known about the protective power that still rested in this sword, but the angel would have. "Here to try and stop me?"

"This sword belonged to a protector of Japan," that ethereal voice said with angelic calm so unlike Sariel's hate-filled words. "Wherefore would I stop you from taking it from those who have no right to its power and returning it to another guardian of this land?"

"You're getting your dialects mixed up."

"I speak the primal common tongue, Cain. It is your mind that turns it into words you can understand now."

"After you stole it from us," he reminded Remiel. "And apparently I conceive of you as someone who tries to pretend to be ancient and wise but really doesn't understand a thing about the language you use, let alone what the words you say really mean."

The angel sighed, gentle and regretful, and he wanted to hurt it. "Amane has retreated into slumber. I no longer have the power to protect her against Jezebel while she is awake."

"So your vessel will die and unleash Jezebel so my brother can kill her without having to stain his hands with the blood of another human, even if she's no innocent in this war." Cain laughed, eyes gleaming with malice. "Do you really expect me to believe that an angel would ever come bearing _good _news?"

"I love God, and you seek his death."

"Well, I love my brother, and first God manipulated me into attacking and killing him, and then sent his angels to murder him all over again, after you tried and failed to convince me to 'undo my sin' by murdering him _again _so that he would no longer be a demon because of his anger at God and instead would be born as a human. A powerless human, unable to protect himself, who doesn't remember me. When if God's mercy actually existed, he would have brought him back to life in the first place and spared us all of this. So really," Cain said, grinning or at least showing his teeth, "your love for God just makes me want to kill him even more. Maybe then you angels will understand what human existence is like."

"It was not God who ordered us to attack your brother, or who dictated the terms of this ordeal. It was Metatron, once known as Enoch. I have begun to doubt that he truly speaks for our Lord."

"Oh?" Cain knew angels could only speak truth. "So you want me to blame the lesser tetragrammaton, the angel that once was human instead of your Creator, the one you are programmed to love? Turning him into a scapegoat, just like me? Someone to blame for God's sins?"

"No one has seen the Creator save Metatron since he directed Noah to build the arc, to purify humanity of those with the blood of demons and fallen angels."

"The first ethnic cleansing carried out by God himself, and not the last." Cain's hatred and rage was almost a physical pressure to Remiel: the power of a soul so closely related to God's own was not one angels who were mindful of their Lord's commands to obey Adam, the Lord's child and his children found easy to resist. "Oh, he will kill Metatron, but it will not stop there," Cain said, looming over Remiel's vessel. "And the honeyed trap you laid out for me will not stop me. She is myself, and you thought she would be a weakness?" Cain asked, ignoring the fact that he had been certain at first that she would be.

As for his brother's, would there be a Queen of Bel now, to stand at his right hand?

Remiel sighed, and said, "You have been preparing a device to allow your brother to fight Jezebel inside Amane's mind, have you not? For her sake, when that device is complete and your brother is strong enough to fight Jezebel, I will place this child in your hands."

"…I will be the one to decide when we are ready. I will ask you if there is anything you have planned for him, if I sense any hint of Sariel's presence, or any sign of a trap laid by someone _else_, I'll make sure Jezebel devours you as well as the girl before my brother defeats her."

"That is acceptable. It pains me to see how little trust there is in you, Cain. It pains me more to realize how much reason you have to doubt my intentions, and those of the servants of God. I can only hope that the companions you now possess will heal this bitterness within you. In all the ages we have labored to redeem you, the efforts of the angels have only made your heart grow colder and colder. It is said that the difference between false prophets and those who truly speak for the Lord will be shown by the fruit their effort bears, whether good or evil comes of their actions. The other angels blame the fruitlessness of their works on man's innate corruption, but if our actions were truly guided by God, would they truly have done nothing but harm?"

"Yes," was Cain's immediate answer, because that was a very stupid question to ask him and Remiel should know that. "Quit while you're ahead: I've already agreed to take Jezebel from inside the girl. We'll see what comes of listening to you."

Remiel bowed her head, and Cain had never seen an angel show respect to a human, even though he did not understand the significance of that failure. "Then that is all I may ask," he said, and left. Cain had once had a child's pure faith in God's goodness, in his grandfather's love of them, had he not? And trust, once broken? Faith, shattered again and again?

Humanity had sinned against God, and needed to earn his forgiveness, but had the angels not harmed humanity, when to hurt another being was a sin regardless of the reason or purpose? Was it not right that they labor as well, to earn the forgiveness of the children of God?

* * *

"This is where you've been sleeping?" Izuna asked them.

"Well, yes," Keisuke told her, then lowered his head, ashamed to meet her eyes. "Well, the night I was with them."

"The ground under the grass is soft, it's summer so it's not cold, and it's easy to keep watch," Atsuro explained. "A lot of people are sleeping over at Shiba Park for the same reasons, except there they've got the Shomonkai protecting them and safety in numbers. But if we were over there, then we couldn't use our demons if other demons started attacking people."

"I see," Izuna said, looking around. It wasn't a bad location: two entrances and exits, so it would be harder to attack them from all sides, but they still had at least two options for retreat, more if they had flying demons or the ones that could pass through walls. "I suppose your camping equipment is up one of those trees?"

"Camping equipment?" Yuzu asked her. "Who brings camping equipment to Tokyo?" Yuzu _wished_.

"I offered to try to grab some stuff from my apartment," Haru told her, "but they didn't think it was worth the risk, since there are demons and demon worshippers after me, and they might have it staked out. And we didn't want to carry it around all day."

"Up a tree…" Atsuro should have thought of that when he'd used his demon to get the child down from that tree.

They heard a dramatic sigh from behind him. "It's been how many days, and you still haven't begun to use the tools at your disposal? I'm disappointed in you, Atsuro."

"Naoya!" Atsuro said, surprised and a little happy to see his teacher approach them out of the shadows.

"This is the reason I took you on as my student in the first place," Naoya told him, hands folded inside the sleeves of his haori, ignoring the gun Captain Izuna already had pointed at him. "So you would be able to advise my brother and see to his comfort when I was busy with another part of the war. You're a programmer and an engineer, Atsuro. Still sleeping on the ground after all this time? What will you do if it rains?"

Atsuro cringed further and further back, because Naoya was right: he should be ashamed of himself. Yuzu was still so uncomfortable sleeping on the grass, it should have occurred to him to think of some way to help with that instead of just focusing on the fun stuff, the programming challenge and the mystery.

"Do you have any idea how easy it is to die of exposure?" Naoya continued.

"That man," Keisuke said. "He's the one who gave me my comp."

"He's my cousin," Abel told him, still seated casually on the grass unlike Atsuro, who had stood up immediately when he heard his teacher.

"I see." Keisuke stared, trying to see some resemblance between Abel's kindness even to a fallen friend and this Naoya's cold disdain. "That's quite a surprise," he said, with a nervous laugh because of what an understatement it was.

"You were handing out comps to children?" Izuna demanded.

"We'll finish this later, Atsuro," Naoya said, and turned slightly to face her. "Yes. I did. Not children, who would have parents and wouldn't be responsible enough, but teenagers, students. Those who grew up in this culture of convenience and didn't have enough knowledge of life or survival to survive on their own. The more comps, the more people would be in range of their harmonizer function, protected by it. I'm sure the SDF has seen what happens when humans try to fight demons _without _a comp nearby to let them survive a single blow or make their bullets connect. It didn't take the Yakuza long to get their hands on comps, did it? Do not misunderstand, Captain Izuna: I know what weapons are for and what they do. In demonic invasions, in any war where their defenders are unable to protect them," and the lockdown was proof the SDF admitted it couldn't protect Tokyo against demons: they both knew it, "_innocents die._ You penned them in here like lambs for the slaughter: I gave them swords and shields to protect themselves with. People being what they are, it was inevitable that some of them would misuse the weapons I gave them or shoot themselves in the foot, but tell me, government dog, which of us has saved more of the people of Tokyo?"

When she could do nothing but growl under her breath in frustration like the dog he named her, he continued, "I didn't start this war: I wasn't the first to summon demons to this world. It's the angels who threatened humanity with an ordeal that would annihilate us: it was the angels who set off the War of Bel in the first place, by murdering humanity's protector and scattering his soul and power into the demon realm! Was it the angels that led you to believe this was all the Shomonkai's fault? Ask them whether the founder was right to fear an ordeal that would kill billions. Ask them whether demon armies would have come to earth regardless, seeking the power of Bel and power over humanity. They can't lie, so all the ways they find to evade the question or try to blacken my name will just be proof. Although some among them hold humans in enough contempt to tell you straight out that in their eyes, we are only worthy of annihilation!"

"Naoya," Abel said calmly, and the programmer who had almost been snarling at Izuna regained control of himself.

"I've wasted enough time here," he said. "Cousin, you're aware of Jezebel, correct?"

He nodded.

"And you've prepared yourselves to defend against fire, since tomorrow you're fighting the evil flame? Good. Come with me." He turned to leave, then turned back. "You too, Atsuro, Yuzu. This was Remiel's request, and knowing the angels, it's probably a trap."

"Remiel asked you to do something about Jezebel?" Abel asked, getting up and following after Naoya. "And you need me to keep the piece of soul she has from going to Belberith?"

"No," Naoya told him as they walked, "I need you to fight her. In order to kill Jezebel and keep Amane alive, we'll need to go inside her mind. I have wards and I've called an ally to guard our bodies while that happens, but I can't risk taking on Jezebel alone while I'm also managing the connection that will let our souls exist in her mind without severing them from our bodies and killing us."

"An angel came to you for help?" It was Keisuke who asked that in a shocked voice, not Izuna.

"Not just any angel: Remiel is my stalker. He might stand by and let tens of thousands of innocents be killed by his brethren, but I do know that unlike most of them, it's actually possible that he's genuinely concerned about the girl's fate. This is the first bit of real compassion for humanity I've seen from an angel in thousands of years. Think of it as a test: we need to know if angels and humans are capable of existing in peace, or if they'll always seek to dominate us and reduce us to animals or destroy us unless we do it to them first."

"Thousands of years? Naoya…" Atsuro was the one to jump on the slip, on the proof that there had always been so much Naoya hadn't told any of them.

"You'll figure it out eventually, Atsuro, but I don't like to talk about it and it's not what's important here," he said without slowing his pace, sandals clacking on the concrete. "What you should be thinking about is survival, yours, my brother's and humanity's. Not all the people no one managed or bothered to save, because if you think defeat is inevitable then your death is certain. I've failed before, so you need to rely on your own power: that's all you need to know."

"Hey, slow down, Naoya," Atsuro was the one to finally give in and dare to complain about the pace.

"See how reliant you are on modern conveniences?" Naoya asked, otherwise ignoring the request. "What do you think will happen when no one is able to make those devices anymore, or power them, or use them? Are any of you capable of growing your own food, surviving without anyone's help?"

"So if the Shomonkai were right, and the ordeal was going to take away all communication," Atsuro said between breaths, "We'd all… I can't believe our daily lives were so fragile."

"This nation's prosperity is only possible because of millions of people working together, all doing tasks that by themselves don't ensure their survival, but together…" Those were the terms this culture taught them to think in, Naoya knew. "Now, render that cooperation impossible because no one can decipher what anyone else needs them to do."

From the gasps and silence behind him, he knew all of them could see it, better than they could have before the Lockdown, before they saw humans reduced to beasts because beasts knew how to survive. "When the primal common tongue was taken, we could at least point, gesture, try to learn what that 'mala' sound someone else kept making meant, because we were aware that sounds and symbols _could _have meaning. This time, they'll take even that from us. There already are humans incapable of learning how to communicate with others: Autism at its most severe. Someone like that would have to rediscover every aspect of life from the ground up, and in a world that is made of other humans and their cooperation, they would never be able to learn to survive on their own. Even if humans continued to have children after the ordeal," it took two, after all, and when consent couldn't be given and even understanding was impossible… "When their mothers are unable to realize that their cries _mean something_?"

"Stop!" Yuzu cried, arms wrapped around herself, imagining that horror. "Stop it!"

"That's what I've been trying to do, and the Shomonkai's founder as well. Humans can rise up and defeat demons: even if Belberith became the King of Bel, he'd be brought down eventually because demons don't understand humanity's willingness to help the weak, to value others for what they can do instead of mere strength. They also admire strength even if it's a human that possesses it. It would be a dark age, but eventually humanity would be free again. Like this lockdown, Captain Izuna, it's a cruel, brutal choice, but better than the alternative. But, if a human becomes King of Bel…"

"But why him? Why did you get all of us involved in this?" Yuzu asked desperately.

He laughed. "You think _I _got him involved in this?"

"No," Yuzu admitted. "Even if you just admitted that you were using Atsuro this whole time. Why me?"

"Because you can sense demons. The way your skin has been crawling since this started? The voice inside your head that's screaming for you to get out of here? If it weren't for the Lockdown, if it weren't for the Shomonkai and all the warning we had, demons would have attacked my brother unprepared, and he's too noble to run when others are in danger. If Beldr showed up at your school? I needed you to _get him out of there_."

"Yuzu…" Atsuro breathed, forgetting the agony of his legs the way Yuzu had forgotten her own fatigue in her anger.

"So hate me, for getting you involved in this. I've been using you for his sake, after all. But don't you think keeping him alive is a good reason?" He knew she did, because she was in love with his brother.

"So what's with Aya and Gin, then?" Haru asked him. "If you're just using them…"

Naoya interrupted her. "Did you know that Aya's your half-sister? A product of one of your father's many affairs. You know why Aya is involved in this… Well, you know one reason. That one definitely isn't my fault, and if you want the other reason, ask Remiel, it's his doing. As for Gin, he's just too stubborn to abandon her, or the city she loves." Abel and Haru could hear that this was why Naoya liked him, why the brother who hadn't let anyone but Abel even a little close had shared a bed with him. "And of course I'm using them. I'm using everyone, including myself. Ask Abel about my death clock if you don't believe me."

"Two. But you're 'the one who revives,' aren't you?" Abel asked him.

"Damn Remiel… Yes. So my life isn't worth as much as yours. If you die, I will die, since that's the only reliable way to find your next incarnation and try to make sure you survive this time. Because if Belberith wins, even if I keep him from eating your soul, they'll be _looking _for you, and they'll sense you as soon as you're born. If the angels win, well, I know how to survive without anyone's help."

"Naoya…" Atsuro breathed now, because he hadn't known, both the girl he liked and his teacher had been suffering all this time and he hadn't been doing enough, just playing around!

"You're kidding, right?" Was Yuzu's demand.

"Don't act so shocked. It's a purely practical decision. And if you three don't stop asking questions and focus on surviving this, I'm going to make sure none of you sleep past dawn for the rest of your lives." Naoya tsked. "What happened to you, cousin, I made sure you were in shape when I was living with you."

"Hey, I'm still the best in my class at…"

"What is this place?" Midori asked.

And that was when they noticed that they'd covered a lot of ground while Naoya was keeping them too shocked and panicked to notice how much their legs ached.

"Is this the contamination zone you were talking about, Izuna?" Atsuro asked, looking around at the black rock and pools of… was that seriously lava?

"No, that was code for where demons appear." She kept her hand on her gun.

"Come along: it's safer here than you think. Demons can be kept out by wards, and humans usually have the sense to avoid places that are this close to the demon world. And this close to the demon world, angels are at even more of a disadvantage than they are in the human world. Pity that humans can't survive in the demon world. It was constructed with a certain set of laws of physics, let's put it that way. As a place without the presence of the divine, the human mind and soul can't exist there."

No one but Izuna was really registering much of that but the sound of his voice, between the threat of their surroundings and the way it felt like their legs had been replaced with lead bars.

"Ow!" Keisuke exclaimed.

"What? Oh! It's like a force field. How cool!" Midori exclaimed, after reaching forward to feel what Keisuke had bumped into.

"I raised the ward strength since this is an angel we're dealing with. I _could _make you push through them," Naoya said, getting out his comp and beginning to hit buttons. "You are human, after all."

"Huh?" Abel said, waving his hand back and forth.

"You don't feel it?" Midori asked him.

"I guess not," he said, stepping across and touching Midori's hand from the other side.

"Is it because you're his cousin?" Midori wondered.

"No, although blood certainly has something to do with it," Naoya said, slipping his comp back into one of his sleeves. "Haru will have as little trouble as he did, Midori would have the next easiest time pushing through it, while Captain Izuna and Keisuke would need quite a lot of willpower to pass."

Atsuro's eyes lit up because ooh, logic problem! Then he remembered the rules Naoya had already stated about wards. "What… Naoya," that wasn't something to tease about.

His teacher smiled approvingly, which took the sting from realizing that the reason the ward didn't let them through so easily was that most of them, including Atsuro, were part-demon. "There's no shame in it, Atsuro. Not a single purely human soul has come into existence for tens of thousands of years. Humanity is weaker with the divine blood watered down. Do you know how rare it is to find someone like you, who somehow managed to be born almost as smart and creative as I am? And I'm not only pure-blooded, I'm only second-generation human."

And that was another hint he'd just dropped, Atsuro knew. It was like Naoya _wanted _them to figure this out, or at least him and Abel.

"Are you saying we're all part demon?" Yuzu realized. She didn't know much about computers, but she could understand people.

"Demon, and angel. There's something I could show you, if we needed to kill much more time," Naoya said, amusing himself by looking at Keisuke's eyes and watching him freeze, instinct making him unable to run even as human instinct told him to get the hell away from that smirk. "Angels are programmed to adore the divine, you see. They couldn't resist pure-blooded humans, not until they were prohibited from continuing to breed with them. I hear that one of my brothers had quite the harem." He reached into his sleeve for something as the door finally opened.

"I got your text," Gin said, scuffing out the line of chalk with his boot.

"Finally. I almost got bored enough to make the little nephilim puppy fall for me," Naoya said as he took out a blindfold. "Captain Izuna?"

"I know." This building was a warren: to find him they'd have to conduct a room-by-room search even after getting past the ward: plenty of time for him to get his equipment out of here, unless she could lead Commander Fushimi's team right to him.

"Hey, we've talked about this: no taking after your aunt," Gin told Naoya as Izuna tied the blindfold on herself and stood still while Naoya checked the knot and the tightness. That was better than letting him tie it himself. "Have you been okay, Haru?"

"Yeah, I'm good. How's Aya?"

Gin sighed. "Annoyed. She was going to be here so I could watch my bar, but she left to talk to the three devas. If this doesn't get resolved pretty soon, there'll be enough death to collapse the barrier and Tokyo's going to get pulled into the demon world. Izuna, right?"

"Yes." Wait, the final option would… Or was this a trick?

"I'm Gin: I own the bar called Eiji, which is my real name. Eiji Kamiya."

Naoya sighed, but it wasn't as though Gin wouldn't have been a target after this anyway, just for his connection to Aya and Naoya. "Do government dogs know how to shake?" he asked idly, because standing stiffly like she was in enemy territory was rude, even if this technically was enemy territory right now.

"Captain Izuna," she said, rolling orange eyes behind the blindfold and reaching out her hand toward Gin's voice. "_You _can call me Misaki."

"He's not normally this bad," Gin told her as he gave her hand a tug down the hall. "It's because Aya told him to lay off Remiel."

"I'm irritated because there is an _angel_ here, and not only is it going to have a chance to kill my brother, it could tell its cohorts where my fallback position is," Naoya said, getting out a piece of chalk to close the circle now that everyone was across it.

"I thought you trusted Remiel," Abel asked him. Or, well, the Naoya version anyway.

"_It's an angel_."

* * *

The angel in Amane's body was sitting in a way that could only be described as primly on the edge of a couch. They were in some kind of waiting or reception area with several couches. "Thank you for coming here for Amane's sake, Son of Adam," he said, addressing Abel.

"Do not talk to or even look at my brother," Naoya ordered him with a pleasant expression (for him) that was all the more threatening. "Now lie down." He looked at his brother's motley group. "I need two volunteers. Not you, Atsuro: I want you here to keep an eye on the comps… And Yuzu would have the best chance of noticing if something's gone wrong. That leaves the songstress, the faerie, the dog and the puppy. You two," he told Izuna and Keisuke. "I want you where I can see you."

"So much for volunteering," Yuzu muttered.

* * *

Naoya grabbed Izuna's shoulder when she started to head towards Jezebel with Abel and Keisuke. "Not you: you have barely any ability to defend yourself against magic, and even if you had the sense to go _around _the lava," unlike Abel, who was just walking on it like water – good, he'd prepared well to fight Belial - "Jezebel would annihilate you."

"So I'm stuck back here guarding you, then?"she asked him, glaring.

"Don't be ridiculous. After Amane's shocked awake, I want you to protect _her_."

"Shouldn't I get close to her, then?"

"No, it looks as though Keisuke has already assigned himself the task of keeping her healed. Once she wakes up, Amane will want to get as far away from Jezebel as possible and this is her mind, after all. So the two of us are staying back here, since Jezebel won't let her go so easily."

"So you know tactics too, Cain."

"I ought to, after tens of thousands of years. So, you've figured it out. Must be the kitsune side at work," he said, folding his arms again and watching the battle closely. "I suppose bringing a demon vulnerable to ice against Belial seemed safe enough," he said, casting recarm on one of Keisuke's.

"And you want me to believe that you're noble, that you're doing all this to protect the brother you killed?"

"Do you know who the first being was to commit the murder of a sentient being?" he asked her. "And no, I'm not making a distinction between murder and manslaughter." Intent to kill and unintended death caused by assault, in this case. "Our parents could speak to the animals, and Abel murdered two of their children to prove a point: it did. Those innocent deaths in his name were pleasing to God. So who was the evil one? The one who enjoyed pain and death, the one cold-blooded enough to sacrifice two lives to make me realize the truth about our creator before any more of the animals Abel was responsible for died and their minds ceased to exist because they had no souls, or the one who couldn't bear to face the reality of either those deaths or the one that came after?" he wondered.

"He wasn't satisfied with the angels' utter devotion because they didn't have a choice about whether or not to give it to him, but that didn't mean that just because he gave us free will he didn't want our mindless worship as well. It would just be something he'd have to work for. The first challenge he'd ever had to enjoy. Ask the angels: God knew I was going to kill Abel. He knew just where he was when he asked me those questions. When Abel returned to life, he forgave me," Naoya said, reflections of the lava flickering in eyes that otherwise might have been dark, "and defended our world against Him." Then his eyes narrowed, hardened, and he finally turned to look at her. "So I can't afford to go soft, can I?" he said, and she knew that he would stop at nothing to win this.

"There's a difference between going soft and being a war criminal."

He snorted and turned back to the battle, silver hair badly in need of a trim swaying. "Please. As though your government's handling of this Lockdown isn't violating plenty of those laws." Anyway, "You'll need to return the Shomonkai's maiden to them after this. Belberith has a few complaints to make to me about how the server I provided him with isn't giving him everything he wants on a silver platter, and I'd like to avoid hearing them. Clients."

"Why would I do that?" When she had valuable information? "And do you want the others to walk across a demon and thug-infested city in the dark, without an adult?"

"Exactly: I don't, which is why they'll be spending the night here. You can meet up with them in the morning. Somewhere else. But I'm not having someone who would willingly channel an angel here while my brother is asleep. Angels tend to have deliberately bad aim: they're jealous of the attention their master gives humans, and a city or a nation tends to seem like a good amount of collateral damage. So you can go with the priestess, or _she _can walk across the city, alone, in the dark, with the scents of angel and Bel demon upon her."

"You'd be sending her to her death."

"Do you have any idea," he said slowly and calmly, "how many dead children I have seen? I was born before old age and disease were _invented_ and _inflicted_ on us. I have seen curse after curse laid upon humanity. You're asking me to care about a single human life. How sweet. When the god that rules humanity is one who even bothers to notice a perished hero, let alone a sparrow's fall, then I'll try to remember how to let myself. But right now, I have a war to win and a brother to look after, so really, besides providing the girl with a bodyguard and saving her from the demon devouring her soul, what else do you want me to do?"


	8. Chapter 8

In the end, Abel objected to Naoya kicking Amane out into a demon and thug infested city, in the dark, with only a single adult who was a rookie tamer and couldn't do or survive a lot of magic and said that either Amane stayed or he went, so an extra couple of sleeping bags were taken from the pile that had been acquired… Somewhere. If Naoya had acquired them in advance, where had he kept them until now?

A black-haired woman Haru's greeting identified as the musician Aya arrived a little after most of the kids had gone to sleep, or at least pretended to after Naoya had said, "I know, why don't we do a traditional summer camping activity and tell scary stories? I'll go first." His grin had been answered with a lot of hurried, 'Thanks, but no thanks'es and Atsuro's fake snores. Well, except for Midori, but Yuzu had quickly shushed her.

Aya disappeared down the hall that lead to a few offices, which was where Gin and Naoya were sleeping and where Naoya had moved the equipment, after giving Haru a hug and talking quietly for awhile: something about a background check, and somebody being hired, and yes, they were sisters!

Which showed that somehow, these people were communicating with those outside of the lockdown. All Naoya had to do was upload the comp program somewhere and they would have failed to contain the demons.

'Sorry, kid," Izuna mouthed silently to Abel, because he really had done a lot to help her mission and he was a good kid. But the mission came first. Naoya telling her to escort Amane was as good as handing Izuna a chance to report to Fushimi and see if he could get new instructions from the government, but Cain would be a much better source than even the Founder's daughter, and he had to be taken down now, if it wasn't already too late to stop the spread of the demons.

First, she had to identify which of those offices Naoya was sleeping in.

Behind her, Keisuke opened his eyes: having someone keep watch was too ingrained in him by now for him to fall asleep just because someone that obviously evil said it was safe. He saw her go, knew that if she'd taken the time to make it look like she was still in her bed she wasn't going to the bathroom, and frowned. But he still didn't wake anyone up, not yet.

Izuna was in luck, because one of the doors was slightly open. Gin and Aya were lovers according to her intel, and Naoya would have locked away his equipment, but she could imagine him being paranoid enough to want to hear anyone coming his way.

Except as she crept closer, needle at the ready she could hear sounds coming from that door, soft little hmms and sighs. Finally Gin whispered, "Should we close the door?" Clearly he didn't know that whispers carried further than just speaking very quietly.

The next person to speak did. "No. If they're attacked, I want to hear it."

Aya murmured, "Stop peering out the window and come to… nest, Gin." Since this wasn't really a proper bed.

When she peered through the crack, silver and black reflected the moonlight, moonshadow as they pulled at him, a bright laugh and a dark chuckle.

Gin smiled. "I don't know, Naoya. I saw their faces earlier."

"I led them on a forced march across Tokyo. Of course I had to motivate them." Naoya knew he was failing utterly at sounding sweet, much less innocent.

"You have too much fun being a jerk," the dark one teased him in a silvery voice.

"You remind me of me when I was young and innocent," Naoya told her, catching that that hair and pulling her gently by it towards another side of the concave mound of comforters and pillows, an angle where they could look up at Gin easier. And make a more tempting picture.

"Technically," Gin pointed out, looking down at them all spread out for him, Naoya in a silk dressing gown he hadn't bothered to tie closed and Aya in one of those skimpy things he'd never bothered to learn the name of because honestly, he liked them better off her.

"Yes, yes, she is me, just young, definitely not innocent, and female. Fortunately, Jezebel didn't look anything like Haru. Except for the tops her false Amanes were falling out of."

Gin poked him with a foot. "Any way we can get that other rib out of you?"

Naoya and Aya both laughed, the sound mingling together. "Could you really handle three of me?" Aya asked, leaning up to brace her elbows on his knees as he sat in that chair and look up at him.

"Hey, I'm still young," Gin reminded her, carding a hand through her hair.

"Absolutely not," Naoya said sighing. "Then I'd never get anything done. How absolutely hypocritical of Remiel, incarnating this," he waved at Aya, "and presenting me with a temptation to indulge in sloth, and lust-" On that word he pulled Aya back down: she let out a quiet laugh of delight at the surprise of it all, and twisted atop him to join her lips to his, pushing him down into the nest. "You are going to make me soft," he accused her, but it was more a familiar joke than anything else. "You and this catch of yours."

"Is it working yet?"

"Mmm, no, I almost made Yuzu cry over all those dead babies and called up divine glory in front of a nephilim/hellhound boy, even if making him think he was gay might have made him a little less likely to get that 'justice or death' attitude back. If anything, you've made me more willing to indulge." To play, like by running his hands up her sides.

"You're such a bitch," she accused him. "I kind of want to be like that, to give myself permission to be wicked, but then I think of all the broken hearts I already leave in my wake. You really should…"

"That's what that girl said. That I wasn't even trying to be good anymore. Well? No one is righteous, not one." He'd quoted that in his program: it was from one of Paul's letters reminding the Roman congregation that all humans were sinners, and because of this no one had any right to claim that they were better than anyone else, or condemn another, not when they needed to work on their own soul, try to keep themselves from sinning against others. The new covenant had much to recommend it. If only it was real. Or if only humans paid any attention to their own invention, instead of preferring the cruelty and self-righteousness of the old covenant, the true YHVH.

"Because it's a better world if people try?" Gin pointed out. "And which girl?"

"The maiden. That was her speaking, not just parroting Remiel's words. Someone with a demon eating her soul had the gall to pity _me_."

Aya and Gin looked at each other, than at him.

"What?" Naoya asked them, annoyed.

"You just be quiet for tonight, alright?" Gin said, lowering himself down.

"We'll take care of you."

Well, Izuna thought as she pulled back, face as flushed as her hair, she wasn't going to be able to subdue and kidnap Naoya while he was tangled up with two other powerful demon tamers. Maybe if he left at some point in the night, but it didn't sound like that would be happening anytime soon.

What was this about ribs, and… her task force had brushed up on Judeo-Christian mythology as soon as their country was effectively invaded by angels. And demons, but the demons had more variety. Did this make Aya the Eve to Naoya's Adam? They even had matching names: how cute.

And maybe she was a dog, or a fox (weren't they related?) because she wanted to snarl, because he had no right to be so beautiful, to have something so perfect.

* * *

Abel woke up as soon as he heard the first notes. As he sat up, he heard Yuzu make a soft sound beside him, but Atsuro was still sound asleep.

Aya, Haru and strangely enough Amane were all singing. Haru was focused on the song, and Amane had her eyes closed and hands stretched up and out, as though offering her voice to heaven, but Aya looked at Gin with a raised eyebrow until he gave in and started singing as well. Although not as well in the sense of as skillfully: he had some practice, because Aya often made him do it, especially when she was practicing a duet, but Aya and Haru were professionals.

From the way Amane's hair was floating, just a little, she was channeling Remiel's singing ability, even if Abel was somehow sure this wasn't actually Remiel singing.

Naoya was leaning against a wall, red eyes focused on the singers. Naoya took mental notes, not physical ones: that wasted paper. Abel suddenly wondered if it was just old habit instead of environmentalism, even though Naoya liked trees.

"Wow," he heard Yuzu quietly breathe, not wanting to drown out the singers, as Izuna kept stuffing her sleeping bag back in its bag.

Hearing that, Naoya glanced over at them and tilted his head to their left, indicating that one of them should nudge Atsuro awake so he didn't have to come over there and do it. His apprentice shouldn't miss this.

"What-Oh!" Atsuro sat bold upright after Abel reached over to shake his shoulder a bit. "The sound files! Which one is this?"

"It's the primal common tongue," Naoya said, annoyed, "So hold yours." Now Naoya closed his own eyes, concentrating fiercely, as though he was fighting a hated enemy rather than appreciating something beautiful.

When they finally stopped, he sighed, frustrated, and shook his head even as Midori declared, "That was great!"

"Yes, it was," Keisuke agreed.

Aya took Haru and Amane's hands and bowed with them, which made Yuzu and Abel start applauding, followed by the others. Gin just looked a little embarrassed and when the clapping subsided asked Naoya, "No luck?"

"None. I've tried to relearn it or at least figure it out before. I wonder if part of the spell that stripped it from every surviving human's minds was a component to keep us from reverse engineering it. I can't believe I was so close to certain that it wasn't even tonal, let alone…" Naoya smiled with bitter malice born of old loss in Amane's direction. "All this time the angels were still speaking it, and I didn't even realize it was the same thing. I can keep memorizing passages, but the primal common tongue came from the heart and soul, so just rote memorization can't be the same thing."

"Every surviving human?" Izuna wondered.

"Angels don't understand the meaning of the word civilian. They don't understand that children… They meant to wipe out all technology and culture. When we lost the primal common tongue, it became almost impossible to coordinate our defenses and the shields protecting the capital from bombardment were down for two hours. None of the other cities were able to get them back up." Because they didn't have any single mages capable of setting up and maintaining shields that had to protect against so many different elements without needing any assistants. "The area around the Mediterranian Sea contained the vast majority of the human race at that point, just like the area that now _is _the Mediterranian Sea held all of earth's cities before the Great Flood. Humanity _won _both of those ordeals, in that we weren't extinct and still had free will afterwards, and both times the population was reduced to a tenth of what it was before."

That was why Naoya had already made arrangements to send the Harmonizer portion of his comp programming to every military on earth if he was no longer alive or in a position to tell the 'dead man switch' program not to send it. The harmonizer strengthened humans and their weapons, allowing them to fight and survive hits from demons and angels. Since armies that used harmonizers would have soldiers that wouldn't die from a single bullet no matter where it hit, every army would _have _to develop the technology. Of course, they wouldn't be able to if they could no longer understand messages.

Of course Izuna was aware he was telling her this so that she would pass it on, that he meant to manipulate the high command, turn them against the angels, but that was why Naoya was only telling the truth. All they'd have to do to confirm that he was actually understating what had happened was ask the angels themselves.

"It was you, brother," he told Abel, "Who said that I should first teach what I knew to the people of the nation you built and then learn every craft, every art. Just in case it happened again, and once again there was no one left alive who remembered how to smelt iron or sew up a wound. That advice has served me, and many others, well."

Kazuya looked embarrassed, like he didn't really think he was that wise. Well, he wasn't right now: he didn't know enough to think of things like that, to recognize the grim necessity of them. "You said that Bel meant master in Akkadian."

"The language that became the new common tongue of what once was the core of the empire, that many other languages are descended from: yes, it did. Your name became the word for lord, king, god, master, rightful ruler… Your people loved you, brother. And you earned that loyalty."

Abel looked a little skeptical. "But I was a demon?"

"So? Amaterasu has also been branded a demon, and yet the Emperors hold this country's throne because they claim descent from her, not in spite of it. The angels want to conquer humanity, and they're also demons. You were born a human, and you returned to Earth to protect it. Not for power, but because you cared about," your family, your nieces and nephews, "our people. Your heart and mind were still human: that's why the core of you has been reborn as one since the angels murdered you. Humanity can only be free if it is ruled by a human." Not a demon like Belberith, an angel like Metatron or God himself. "If you don't become the King of Bel, the remaining pieces of you in the demon realm will be drawn to Earth once again, because it's this world that you care for. The war will repeat itself a thousand years from now, and the angels will use that as an excuse to inflict another ordeal on us." It wasn't in Kazuya's nature to let a threat like that loom over people just so that he didn't have to deal with it now. He would have to deal with it eventually, anyway. "You do have alternatives, but as long as you remain incomplete, this world is in even more danger than it was already, with the angels hanging over our heads."

Kazuya frowned, because, "How did I become a demon in the first place?"

"…I think I've said enough. You have to make up your own mind, and prepare to fight Belial, among others. I have to get back to work myself." So many contingencies to prepare for, so much intelligence to gather. "Don't forget to take food and water with you when you leave."

"…I don't think I'll forget that." Not after enduring the lockdown, after having to fight through crowds to get at the SDF supply crate drops.

"Exactly how many times did you forget your lunch until I just started putting it in your backpack for you?" Naoya wondered. "You'd remember your homework, but not your lunch. It's still strange to me that food is so plentiful in this era that people can think that way. Let's try to keep things from going back to normal," he told his brother, and started walking back towards his bedroom. Oh, right. "Gin, I'll send you my Garuda so you don't have to walk back."

"Thanks. I hope my stock didn't get too smashed up." He was thinking of opening it tonight: the kids should get a chance to celebrate beating Belial, even with the deadline looming over them.

"Three break-in attempts last night, according to the notification system. I've noticed that after a place has been broken into once, especially if it looks like it was broken into by demons since they're the only ones left, it doesn't seem as wrong to break into it a second time. Well, at least you won't have bodies to clean up." The demons summoned by the comp Naoya left attached to the alarm system would have eaten them.

"…And let me guess, you forgot to program the demons not to attack me."

"Would I really make a mistake like that?"

"…Meaning you deliberately didn't identify me as a friendly." Probably because Gin needed the practice and it wouldn't look like he was in league with the demons if he had to kill them to take back his own place.

Naoya smiled, not so much proud but as though he'd expected that Gin would figure it out, and as though the joke was one they shared instead of one on Gin. Being on the vanishingly small list of people Naoya, or rather Cain, actually respected was, well… It was like when he'd realized that he and Aya were actually going steady, and then that they were partners. Even if Aya still yelled at him sometimes about having no appreciation for the beauty of nature and the world around them and, well, Aya had taught him to love Tokyo but Gin was a fairly laid-back guy, while Aya was focused, driven, even if not as obsessively as Cain. So he just wasn't going to get as excited about this stuff as she seemed to think he should be.

"Right, well, see you guys later. I'll be at my bar if you have any questions I can actually answer, Captain Izuna."

"That would be appreciated." Izuna caught Naoya's warning glance: humans had been taking hostages to ensure others' good behavior for thousands of years, after all. He wouldn't let Gin be within the SDF's grasp if he hadn't taken steps to ensure his lover's safety, and he knew she'd better know that. If the task force still tried to capture him, they would have initiated hostilities and in Cain's mind, this was war. The government could be his ally, stay out of his way, or be aiding and abetting the conquest or elimination of the human race by making it harder for him to defend it.

Even if he knew what mercy meant, that cup had since long runneth dry, when he saw himself as fighting an enemy that wouldn't have any.

* * *

At the end of it, Gin stands at Eikojuki, guarded by Aya and Izuna, Amane and Yuzu, as he uses the sword of Jikoku and Take-Mikazuchi to reform the barrier protected by the four devas.

Aya is there because he's her lover, Izuna is there because this is for the sake of protecting Japan, Amane is there as penance for slaying Jikoku and Yuzu is there because she knew Gin before all this started and they need her to tell them which direction the next demons are coming from so they can get ready.

At the top of the tower Babel was summoned to, Kazuya slays Babel and breathes all that knowledge and power back into his soul. Belial and Belzeboul and all the others are no longer just part of him: demons are nurtured by belief and Belial has a partner and a little girl, Beelzebub stands at the right hand of the Great Darkness, but he's taken back the part of him that was in them.

At the top of the tower Haru is singing, and Kazuya is the server that hears her song and obeys it/executes the program, and the demons are charging the barrier desperately because if they don't get past that barrier, they'll be sucked back into the demon world, their wills unable to hold out against the command of a demon god, the being whose name became the first word for Master. For king, for god, for the one knelt before, and served, for he is worthy.

Humanity's lord.

At the top of the tower Midori cheers, and Keisuke stands next to her and smiles with relief, because the demons are gone. Mari would clap and give them an A+, but she's standing in the plaza beneath with Fushimi, and Kaido who got roped in to help hold off the demons for awhile. Kaido is grumbling about all the fun being over, but because Mari's still here and went to get him specifically and he avenged his brother, eh, it's not all bad.

At the top of the tower Naoya is smiling as Atsuro watches, but his teacher's eyes are only for his brother and the one whose hand he holds. Those red eyes are soft, and proud, and patient, because this is enough for now. Kazuya has refused to war on heaven, not yet, but now he is immortal again. When the next Ordeal comes, when Metatron descends with an army, his brother can and will fight. His brother does not remember yet, but he will. Soon Naoya will have what is left of his family back, his brother will be able to defend himself again (with Naoya's guidance), and Atsuro can see Naoya stand a little taller, somehow, as the weight is taken off his shoulders. When Naoya is next reborn into a family that does not know him, that is likely to be struck by tragedy, he will have a home to return to.

He will have more than one person to return to, more than one person to depend on. More than one person to care for, and Atsuro remembers his teacher's lessons, his games, how he encouraged Atsuro and expected that he could accomplish great things, program like no one else because he was the one Naoya had chosen as his student. He remembers being invited to sleep over, or rather to stay a few days, when the house got a little too empty and the internet wasn't enough to drown out all the silence. He knows that no matter what Naoya sighs and says, he likes watching children run around the place, making noise and enjoying life with an enthusiasm he barely remembers.

Atsuro knows that Naoya will make sure to tell him and Yuzu that they have done well, that he's proud of them, and it will be true, like he's going over to tell Kazuya and Haru now…

At the top of the tower, Naoya drops to one knee before Abel. "My brother. My king."

"Naoya?" Kazuya asks, then belatedly adds, "Cain?" Because he knows they are the same person, but it might make a difference to Naoya which one he's called, might make him worry that Kazuya accepts his cousin Naoya but still resents Cain's manipulations. Or… something. Naoya is hard to understand, but part of the reason Kazuya was willing to accept Babel, to take in this big mass of emotions and thoughts that used to belong to a different him, to himself in a totally different and much longer life, is that he _wants _to understand Naoya, Cain, his cousin, his brother.

He kind of wants to say, 'you don't have to kneel,' but it could be worse, he could be prostrating himself. From what Kazuya knows, he figures that just going to one knee when swearing loyalty, or renewing it, was pretty low-key under the circumstances. He doesn't want to act like he's rejecting this, since it's important to Naoya.

He's still glad when Haru squeezes his hand, and he knows that she's smiling and would be telling him not to worry so much about it if she wanted to interrupt a brotherly moment.

Naoya reported that, "I've already gotten in contact with Shoji." At first he'd thought that a reporter was a bad friend for Abel to make, when uncontrolled information could do so much damage, but information was power, after all. "Charges against Amane will be dropped, and charges against me will simply not be filed."

"Blackmail?" Kazuya guessed.

Naoya smiled and nodded: that was his cousin, but, "Not just blackmail. I had months to prepare, after all." To phantasm into places he wasn't supposed to be and leave bugs or steal the recordings that already existed.

Broadcasting the angels' demands, the angels' arrogance, and what happened to Shoji's mentor and Atsuro's friend 10Bit will undermine both them and the current government: they'll become the scapegoats the angry and grieving people of Tokyo, of this entire country and all the others who had people in the city when it was locked down, will need.

And people will start thinking about what just happened, about contingency planning, about how it might someday be necessary to go to war with a species and a power that has, in the past, attacked humanity and committed genocide and as good as announced its intentions to do so again at the first opportunity.

Naoya doubts he'll need to wait a thousand years for his next opportunity, not now that Kazuya is King of Bel and determined to protect this world, not now that certain people know that Naoya exists and that he is a living encyclopedia of knowledge of how to combat the angelic threat.

Blaming the angels… It was Remiel that gave him the idea, really. It's easier for people to blame angels, blame the other, than face the fact that God, their own creator, their own Father and Grandfather, is evil.

And who knows, it might even be true. Or, at least, it might be true that there's some part of God that knows that what he's doing is wrong, that he should have mercy on his children and the suffering he's inflicted on them.

Naoya doesn't really care, he finds, because either way he'll have vengeance, either way humanity and his brother will be safe, either way he's…

…happy.

He's accomplished enough in this lifetime that he can take some time off from his main project to figure out how to make Gin immortal, he calculates. Maybe Atsuro, he's useful. And…

The sky overhead is no longer as red as his eyes.


End file.
